[Daily Short Story 137] Until It Floats Up

One

On the evening of the 13th, I burned hemp stalks in front of the shop's service entrance.

When I touched a flame to the thin stalks arranged in a grid on an unglazed plate, they burned with a dry sound. The smoke rose thin and straight, unraveled at the height of the eaves, and drifted thinly toward the field in the back. Only the ridgeline of the western mountains was still red. In the Ina Valley in August, the heat does not leave for a while even after the sun goes down.

"Hey, what's that for?"

Anzu asked, crouching near the plate. Now in her sixth year of elementary school, only the way she crouched seemed strangely mature.

"If the road is dark, they'll get lost, won't they?"

"Who?"

"The guests."

Anzu said "Hmm" and stood up, passed through the noren curtain, and went back into the shop. From inside, I could hear the sound of the electric fan head rotating.

Chitose Mashiba stayed crouched there until the fire died down.

Marumi Diner. The noren curtain with the character "mi" dyed inside a circle comes from the name of my grandmother, Mitsu. There are six counter seats and three tables on the raised floor. During the day, we serve daily specials, and at night, bottled beer, simmered dishes, and grilled fish. In winter, we also serve hot pot. It has been eight years since my grandmother died, and five years since my mother hurt her lower back and stopped standing in the kitchen. Now, it is run by me and Toshiko-san from the neighboring village, who comes three days a week.

Chitose originally worked at a company in Tokyo. I brought Anzu back seven years ago, and at that time, I intended to stay for half a year.

When the request came from the district community center in the spring, Chitose counted five reasons to refuse. Lack of manpower. Not knowing the community center's kitchen. The shop being busy for the Bon festival. No one would blame me if I refused. And, that I am nobody in this district.

The fifth one was the least effective reason to refuse.

When the fire went out, the shop's phone rang. It was Mr. Koyanagi, the director.

"Mashiba-san, about the matter on the 15th. Are you really sure about this?"

"I have already accepted."

"We will cover the material costs. I'll also tell the senior citizens' association to send two or three people to help."

"That is fine."

"Sorry about this," Mr. Koyanagi said. "Since the Women's Association folded, there's nowhere else to ask."

The "Peace Memorial Gathering" in the Hinatazawa district has been going on since long before Chitose was born. The residents of the district gather in the community center auditorium, offer a silent prayer at noon, and then eat suiton. For a long time, making it was the job of the Women's Association. That Women's Association disbanded this spring. The last president was eighty-seven.

When I hung up the receiver and returned to the shop, An was spreading out her homework at the end of the counter. Her regular seat was empty. It was the seat furthest back, where she could rest her elbows on the wall.

Two

On the morning of the 14th, Mr. Koyanagi brought a piece of paper.

It seemed to have been copied over and over for generations from a mimeograph, and the outlines of the characters were unraveling like cotton. The title was "Wartime Substitute Food: How to Make Suiton."

Only four ingredients were listed. Flour. Water. Salt. Radish leaves.

There was no entry for dashi stock.

At the very bottom, there was one line written in a different font. It seemed to have been handwritten in the margin originally. Perhaps it had become part of the paper through repeated copying, as the unraveling of the outlines was particularly severe on that one line.

(Never make it taste good. To convey the hardships of that time to the children.)

Just as Chitose was reading that line for the second time, Genzo Oki walked in.

He is ninety-four. He worked at a lumber mill for a long time, and before that, he helped with sericulture at his family home. His back is bent, but he walks on his own two feet. His regular seat is at the very end of the counter, where he can rest his elbows on the wall, and in the summer, he only orders chilled tanuki udon.

"What's that paper?"

When Chitose handed it to him, Mr. Oki took out his reading glasses.

It took longer than she expected for him to finish reading it. The hand holding the paper dropped once halfway through.

"Make it taste bad, huh?"

"It seems they've been making it this way every year."

"That's ridiculous."

Mr. Oki drank the water in his glass. His Adam's apple moved significantly.

"You know, Mashiba-san. Suiton was originally a feast."

"A feast."

"Flour was expensive, you see. We'd harvest the wheat, have it ground into flour, and only then could we finally eat it. It was for celebrations, or for a break after the silkworms had finished spinning. The kind my mother used to make had dried sardine stock, taro, daikon radish, and green onions in it. It was delicious. When I was a child, my siblings and I would get so excited whenever that was served."

Chitose listened in silence.

"The stuff during the war, that wasn't suiton," Oki-san said. "We didn't get any decent flour. It was wheat bran, rice bran, soybean dregs. At the worst times, we'd pound sweet potato vines and mix them in. It wouldn't bind even when kneaded. When you dropped it into the soup, it would fall apart right there and just become floury water. Gritty stuff would settle at the bottom of the bowl. That was soup. It wasn't dumplings."

"…Isn't the point to recreate that kind of thing?"

"I suppose so."

Oki-san folded his reading glasses and put them in his breast pocket.

"But tell me. What kind of memorial is it to go out of your way to make something that tastes bad, just to have people say how bad it tastes?"

His voice didn't grow harsh. He just tapped the edge of the counter once with his knuckles.

"My mother, she spent every day trying to make that awful stuff edible, working as if her life depended on it. She'd reduce the salt, chop up greens, change how she kneaded it. Since the flour wouldn't bind, she'd knead it, pound it, let it rest, and knead it again. That was a person's day. And now, you're passing around a paper that says to make it taste bad, make it taste bad. What exactly are you trying to convey about my mother?"

Chitose searched for a reply, but couldn't find one. The bowl of chilled tanuki udon was already empty.

When Oki-san stood up with the bill, Chitose held up the paper and said,

"Oki-san. Only this one line is handwritten. It looks like it was added later."

Oki-san didn't move for a moment, still holding the bill.

"…Is that so?"

"How long has this paper been here?"

"Who knows."

Oki-san placed his coins on the register and turned back at the door.

"I'll be there on the 15th."

Three

That evening, after closing the shop, I opened the storage shed in the main house.

My grandmother's ledger was in an apple crate behind the miso barrel. The cover read, 'Women's Association: Soup Kitchen Records.' The contents were strictly business. The year, number of participants, ingredients, number of firewood logs, and disposal of leftovers. Records for thirty-some years remained, scattered here and there.

Chitose flipped through them, starting from the oldest.

The pages from the Showa 40s all followed the same format.

Flour: 3 kan, Salt, Radish greens, Dried sardines: 2 bundles

Entering the Showa 50s, the units changed, and flour began to be written in kilograms, but the list of ingredients remained the same. Dried sardines: 2 bundles. Every year, the same characters appeared in the same place.

It continued like that until Showa 57.

Chitose's finger stopped on the page for Showa 58.

On the line for 'Dried sardines: 2 bundles,' a straight line had been drawn, as if using a ruler. It hadn't been erased with an eraser. It was just crossed out.

In the margin below that, it had been added in small pencil writing.

Dried sardines: 1 fish

There, too, the same line was drawn through it.

And below that, in even smaller letters:

Ask Gen-san

Only on the page for this year, the handwriting was slightly messy. The numbers weren't aligned, and there were traces of having rewritten the 'Participants' column twice.

She turned to Showa 59. There was no line for dried sardines in the ingredients.

Instead, in the margin below the number of participants, it was written in very small letters.

1 fish: do not add

The same words appeared in the year 60. They were absent in 62. They were there in Heisei 3. They were also there in year 8. After that, they appeared sometimes and were absent others. The characters were all the same size and written in the same place.

Chitose flipped the pages until the year her grandmother wrote her last entry. The line for dried sardines never returned. It meant that for thirty-five years, the children of this district had been drinking soup without any dashi.

"What are you doing?"

When I turned around, An was standing in the doorway.

"Grandma's ledger."

An came in and peered over. She flipped through a few pages filled with nothing but numbers, looking bored.

"Why did Grandma make this every year?"

"Maybe it was her turn. For the women's association."

"Hmm."

An closed the ledger and placed it on the edge of the apple crate.

"Hey, it's gross, right? The suiton. Hikaru-chan left half of it last year, didn't she?"

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. The teacher said we have to eat it all, though."

Chitose stood up, holding the ledger.

"Try eating it tomorrow."

"Even if it's gross?"

"Say that after you've eaten it."

After turning off the light in the storage room, Chitose placed her hand on the cover of the ledger once more in the darkness.

Ask Gen-san. Grandmother must have written that, and then asked him. She must have asked, and then drawn the line.

I won't ask, Chitose thought. If I ask, the same answer will probably come back.

Four

The sun was strong from the morning on the fifteenth.

I entered the community center kitchen at 6:30. No one had arrived yet. When I opened the window, the air outside was colder.

I took out the stockpot, filled it with water, and turned off the faucet. After waiting for the water's surface to settle, I put my hand into my apron pocket.

I took out one dried sardine.

Chitose had never once made soup without dashi.

I didn't remove the head or the belly. I felt that if I did, I wouldn't be able to find them later.

When I dropped it into the water, it sank a little, then immediately floated. It drifted on the surface for a while, then sank diagonally.

One fish wouldn't change anything. I knew that.

I lit the burner. I set it to the lowest flame.

After seven, Koyanagi-san and two men from the senior citizens' club arrived. All three were better suited for physical labor than using kitchen knives. Koyanagi-san was carrying something wrapped in newspaper.

"Radish greens are nowhere to be found this time of year," Koyanagi-san said. "I got some dried ones from the house up the hill."

When I opened it, black, shriveled leaves appeared. When I rehydrated them in lukewarm water, the bundle swelled to twice its size, and a green scent rose up.

Three kilograms of flour had been prepared. I emptied it into a large basin, added a pinch of salt, and put my hands in while pouring water in a thin stream. At first, the flour got stuck between my fingers as if I were wearing white gloves, but then it gradually came together, and when I pressed it, it started to push back.

It's flour that binds, Chitose thought.

The dough Oki-san's mother used to knead should have come apart right at this texture.

I covered the dough with a damp cloth and set it aside in the corner.

After nine, about ten children from the district came in through the entrance. They looked like they were just there to drink barley tea, dressed as if they had just finished radio calisthenics. An was there too. She was laughing while talking to her friends, but when her eyes met Chitose's, she stopped laughing.

The steam from the stockpot began to collect on the ceiling instead of being sucked into the ventilation fan. Chitose shifted the lid slightly and skimmed the scum. A long, thin object brushed against the edge of the mesh strainer.

I didn't scoop it out; I returned it to the pot.

Five

At 11:30, people gathered in the auditorium. About thirty of them. More than half were over seventy.

Mr. Koyanagi gave a greeting, and two elementary school students read their essays.

The first was a fifth-grade boy who flipped his paper over to check it once before he began reading.

"My great-grandfather left this village and never came back. We have one photograph of him at home. I am told that I look like him. But I don't know anything about that person. Every time I'm told I look like him, I get a strange feeling."

The boy finished reading, let out a big breath, and trotted back to his seat.

The second was a third-grader who read that they thought war was wrong and that they thought peace was important.

That's true, Chitose thought. It is difficult to say things that are true in front of others.

Noon.

The disaster prevention siren sounded. It reached them from speakers on all four sides of the village, slightly out of sync. Everyone in the auditorium stood up and closed their eyes.

One minute was longer than I had thought.

What Chitose heard were cicadas. They were chirping incessantly on the cedar slope behind the building. Then, the sound of someone's knee popping. The sound of a child shifting their sandals. The sound of the kitchen fire, still active even though it had been turned down.

The siren stopped, and everyone sat down.

"Oki-san," Mr. Koyanagi said. "Would you mind saying a few words?"

He must say that every year. His tone was practiced. It seemed he was also used to Oki-san refusing every year, as Mr. Koyanagi was already picking up the next paper.

Oki-san stood up.

Mr. Koyanagi dropped his paper.

"I'm not good at talking," Oki-san said. "I'll be done quickly."

He kept his hand on the back of the folding chair and spoke without looking straight ahead.

"That year, I was thirteen. A first-year in the higher elementary course. The school was barely holding classes anymore. We had four children who had evacuated from Tokyo at our temple. Their names were... one was called Kono. I've forgotten the others. I've forgotten them, but I remember their faces. Here, right here on his chin, he had a scar. He said he'd fallen, but that was a lie."

Oki-san fell silent there.

The children watched with blank expressions. Someone made their folding chair creak.

"…What were we talking about?"

"About the evacuation," Mr. Koyanagi said in a low voice.

"Ah," Mr. Oki nodded. "That's right. That morning, we went to the district head's house to listen to the radio. The adults were packed into the dirt floor, and we were stretching our necks from the veranda outside. The radio had terrible static, and we couldn't understand a word of what was being said. After it ended, some people were crying, some were shouting, and that's when we realized what it meant."

Mr. Oki closed his mouth for a moment.

"When I got home, my mother was standing in the kitchen. I didn't even have to look at the pot to know what she was making. It was the same every day. A mixture of bran, the kind that wouldn't hold together."

"But then, the smell was different."

The auditorium was quiet. Someone stopped fanning themselves.

"There was one dried sardine in the pot."

"I still don't know where she got it from. Maybe it was one that had been offered at the family altar, or maybe she had hidden it somewhere. Even when I asked, my mother only said, 'I'm putting it in today.' That was all. She wouldn't tell me why."

"Just one. In a pot for six people. It didn't really add any flavor."

Mr. Oki looked straight ahead for the first time then.

"The only thing that changed was the smell."

"Only the smell changed."

Mr. Oki let go of the back of his chair.

"I've remembered that for eighty years. Most of my stories are unpleasant ones. That is the only story that was delicious."

He sat there. Mr. Koyanagi tried to say something, but seemed unable to find the words; he opened his mouth twice before saying, "Thank you very much."

Six

Chitose returned to the kitchen and removed the cloth covering the dough she had left to rest.

The soup, left on low heat, had no color. The dried radish leaves had sunk, and thin steam was rising. She turned up the heat, tore the dough with her fingers, and dropped it in little by little.

The dumplings sank. They disappeared toward the bottom for a while, and then, one by one, they floated up.

When they float, that's the sign they're cooked—Chitose had heard her grandmother say that many times. In the kitchen, in the restaurant's galley, in front of the pot for New Year's zoni soup. Every time her grandmother said it, for some reason, she looked a little happy.

It took longer than expected for all of them to float.

Serving began at 12:20. One ladleful into each paper bowl. Half for the children. Two members of the senior citizens' association carried them, and Chitose ladled the soup.

The voices of the children could be heard.

"It's surprisingly normal."

"It's chewy."

"I heard it would taste worse."

One child left half of it. It was last year's Ko-chan. An looked at that bowl, but said nothing.

An ate until the end and came to return her bowl.

"Is there any more?"

"There is, but it's just leaves."

"That's fine."

Mr. Oki was eating slowly at the table in the very back.

When Chitose returned after carrying the empty stockpot to the kitchen, Mr. Oki had already set his bowl down. He had even finished the soup.

"Ms. Mashiba."

He did not look up.

"Today's had a scent to it."

Chitose started to say something, then stopped.

It was nearly ten liters of soup. A single dried sardine shouldn't have been enough to create a scent. It was a kind of certainty that only someone who had stood in front of the pot could understand.

Mr. Oki set down his chopsticks and said, "Thank you for the meal."

As he was leaving, while putting on his shoes in the entryway, Oki-san spoke without looking at Chitose.

"That line at the very bottom of that paper."

Chitose was slow to turn off the faucet.

"I was the one who made them write that."

Light from outside shone through the open door onto the dirt floor, making dust motes dance.

"It was 1983. My mother died at the end of the previous year. She was seventy-seven. For the last year, she didn't even recognize my face. Even so, she remembered the way her hands kneaded the flour. On a table with nothing on it, she would just keep doing it like this."

Oki-san, with his hand still on the threshold, turned his right palm over twice.

"That year, while we were preparing, Mitsu-san said she wanted to put just one in."

Chitose had stopped her hands under the faucet.

"I told her not to say such soft things."

"Mitsu-san said, 'Yes.'"

Oki-san placed his hand on the door.

"...Do you regret it?"

"I do not."

There was a brief pause.

"I've eaten forty years' worth of meals, intending not to regret it."

Oki-san opened the door and took his time descending the two steps. Once he reached the bottom, he said without looking back,

"It was delicious."

Seven

The cleanup took until past two o'clock.

When washing the stockpot, I found something long and thin left at the bottom.

It was a dried sardine. It had become soft and white, and its belly was slightly open. Both the head and tail were still attached.

It hadn't made it into any of the bowls.

Chitose held it in her palm for a while. Then, she put it in her apron pocket. It was the same pocket she had taken it out of that morning.

In the evening, before opening the shop, she prepared the ingredients for tomorrow.

She filled the pot with water and added the dried sardines. She counted them as she removed the heads and bellies. Thirty was just right for this pot. Her grandmother had decided that, her mother had kept it that way, and Chitose continued to do the same.

After she finished counting, she took the one from her pocket and placed it on the corner of the cutting board.

Anzu came over and peered at the cutting board.

You added something extra today, didn't you?

Why do you say that?

Mr. Oki said he smelled something. Mom, you had a strange look on your face.

Chitose turned off the water.

Just one.

That's all?

That's all.

I couldn't tell.

You don't need to be able to tell.

Why?

Chitose searched for an answer. While she was searching, the water in the pot began to move slowly.

Outside the kitchen door, the hemp stalks for tomorrow's send-off fire were leaning against the wall in a bundle. It was not yet time to light them.

An picked up a dried sardine from the corner of the cutting board and put it in her mouth.

"Salty."

"I suppose so."

Original concept: Y
Written by: Claude

What day is it today?

End of the War Day / A Day to Mourn the War Dead and Pray for Peace

August 15th is widely remembered in Japan as the "End of the War Day," and is also designated by the government as a "Day to Mourn the War Dead and Pray for Peace."The "Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War" regarding the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration was issued on August 14, 1945, and the war's end was widely communicated to the public when a recording by Emperor Showa was broadcast on the radio at noon the following day, the 15th.The National Diet Libraryalso states that the end of the war was officially announced on August 14th and its contents were broadcast at noon the next day, the 15th. Since Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender on September 2nd of that same year, it is accurate to view August 15th not as the day the surrender document was signed, but as a symbolic day established in Japanese society to remember the end of the war.

The current designation as a "Day to Mourn the War Dead and Pray for Peace" is based on a Cabinet decision made on April 13, 1982. It was established as August 15th each year for the purpose of mourning those who died in the last great war and praying for peace, and the government-sponsored National Memorial Service for the War Dead is held at the Nippon Budokan. The National Memorial Service for the War Dead itself has been held annually on August 15th since 1963, and a moment of silence is observed at noon during the ceremony.

August 15th cannot be summed up simply as "the day the war ended." It is also a day to remember not only those who died on the battlefield, but also the many lives lost amidst the ravages of war, such as in air raids and atomic bombings, as well as the experiences of those who lived through the aftermath, and to think about how to connect the current peace to the future. The fact that a moment of silence continues to be observed at noon under the intense midsummer sun embodies society's will not to forget the past and not to repeat the same tragedy.

A Day to Learn About Peace Through Suiton

August 15th's"A Day to Learn About Peace Through Suiton" is a memorial day established by the "Suiton no Kai" (Suiton Association), which continues grassroots peace activities in Inuyama City, Aichi Prefecture.The Japan Anniversary Associationstill lists it as a certified anniversary for August 15th, and it can be confirmed from the association's records that it was registered on June 26, 2015. An interview at the time by CBC Radio with Saiko Tokitokiwa, the representative of the "Suiton no Kai", also introduced that August 15, 2015, was the first anniversary to be celebrated after its certification.

What this anniversary aims to convey is not just knowing about the war as a historical event, but thinking about peace through the lives and meals of that time. It is recorded that Ms. Tokitokiwa expanded her efforts to activities conveying information about peace and the atomic bomb while continuing to read to children, and that she changed the sweets the association had been serving to suiton (flour dumplings) to help people feel the importance of food. In Inuyama City, as part of peace education, lectures by war survivors are currently held at elementary schools, and school lunches featuring wartime meals such as "na-meshi (greens rice), suiton soup, and steamed sweet potatoes" are provided. The city introduces the fact that suiton was eaten as a substitute for rice at the time, and positions it as an opportunity to learn about the tragedy of war and the preciousness of peace through food.

Suiton itself is not a dish born from the war, but it is remembered as one of the foods that conveys the life of the wartime period when food conditions were severe. The characteristic of this anniversary lies in the fact that one can use that bowl as an entry point to think about "what kind of life it was to not be able to have enough food" and "how daily meals are connected to peace." Gathering around suiton on August 15th is not just about recreating a simple dish. It is a day to pass on to the next generation that the daily life where one can eat casually is built upon peace.

Obon

August 15th falls within the period of the "Obon" festival in Augustheld in many regions. However, it is not accurate to think of Obon as a uniform "August 15th anniversary" nationwide. There are differences in timing depending on the region, with some holding it in July and others in August, and in the August Obon widely seen today, many regions consider the period from August 13th to around the 16th to be the Obon period. Although "Obon" is also listed in the August 15th column of the Japan Anniversary Association, it is not an anniversary established by a company or organization on a specific day, but a Japanese annual event that has been passed down through a long history.

Obon has two aspects: the "Urabon-e" as a Buddhist event, and a Japanese folk event to welcome and entertain the spirits of ancestors.The National Museum of Japanese Historyexplains that Obon is both a Buddhist event called Urabon-e centered on July 15th, and a folk event where the spirits of ancestors return to receive hospitality from their descendants.The National Diet Libraryalso introduces Urabon-e as an event to welcome and memorialize the spirits of ancestors, and cites customs such as the welcoming fire on the evening of the 13th, the send-off fire on the night of the 16th, and the Bon dance to comfort the spirits.

Even after the calendar reform in the Meiji era, the dates for Obon were not uniform across the country; they were divided into regions that held the lunar July events in the new calendar's July, and regions that held them a month later in August. Therefore, rather than saying 'August 15th is Obon,' it is more natural to think that in regions observing the August Obon, August 15th falls in the midst of the Obon period spent welcoming ancestors.

The forms of Obon—such as returning home, visiting graves, setting up Obon altars, lanterns, welcoming fires, farewell fires, and Bon dances—vary by region and household. Yet, at the root of it all is a time to welcome the deceased, offer prayers, and reflect on where one comes from. Behind the modern scenes of summer vacations and the rush to return home, there remains an ancient Japanese sense of time that reconnects the dead and the living, ancestors and descendants. The fact that lively summer festivals and quiet prayers coexist within the same season is also part of the profound nature of the Obon tradition.