“Hey, Wizard’s Gold!”
“Who calls, and how may I help you?”
“Over here. In the hole. It really works on the complexion?”
“Within a single day, sir.”
“Woo-hoo!” He crawls out of the hole, clambers to his feet, and freezes. “Hey! You’re the rabbit!”
“I am indeed a rabbit, sir, but I’m a male rabbit and a medicine peddler. Yes, for thirty-some-odd years I’ve traveled this region, peddling medicine.”
“Phew,” the tanuki sighs and tilts his head. “You sure look like that other rabbit, though. Thirty-some-odd years, eh? Well, let’s not talk about the passage of time. So boring! I mean, enough is enough. And there you have it.” Having wrapped up this incoherent digression, he jumps to the point. “Say, how about giving me a taste of that medicine? Truth is, I’ve got a little condition, you see, and—”
“My! Those are terrible burns you’ve got there, sir. They must be treated. If not, you’ll surely die.”
“Well, I’m just about ready to die, I’ll tell you. And I don’t care about the damn burns. The truth is, well, right now, I was thinking more about, you know, my skin color, because—”
“I beg your pardon, sir? This a matter of life and death! The most severe burns are on your back, I see. How in the world did this happen?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” the tanuki says with a grimace. “Just because I walked down some hill with the fancy name of Crackle-Burn Mountain, all these crazy things started happening. I was as surprised as anybody.”
The rabbit snickers in spite of herself. The tanuki can’t see the joke but laughs along anyway.
“Ah, ha, ha, ha! Crazy, crazy things, I tell you. Let me give you some advice, pal. Don’t go near that mountain. First you’re on Click-Clack Mountain, and then it becomes Crackle-Burn Mountain, and that’s where it goes bad. Terrible things happen. You’re best off just stopping at Click-Clack. Stray on to Crackle-Burn, and—well, you see what can happen. Ow! You listening? Let this be a warning to you. You’re still a young fellow, I see, but that’s no reason to laugh at your seniors—I mean, not that I’m old, but—let’s just say you need to respect what your more experienced pals tell you. Ow.”
“Thank you, sir, I’ll be careful. And to express my gratitude for your kind advice, I won’t charge you for the medicine. Please allow me to put some on those burns on your back. It’s a good thing I happened along. You might well have died from these burns. Maybe it’s a sort of divine guidance that brought me here. We must have some kind of connection, you and I.”
“Maybe so,” the tanuki says huskily. “Well, as long as it’s free, slap it on. I’m flat broke these days. I’ll tell you, fall in love with a woman and you end up spending a lot of cash. Put a drop of that medicine on my hand too, would you?”
“To what end, sir?”
“What? No, no reason. I just want to, you know, look at it—see what color it is and everything.”
“It looks like any other medicine. See?” The rabbit allows a pea-size drop to drip on the tanuki’s outthrust palm and is startled to see him immediately attempt to smear it on his face. She knows that if he does that, the true nature of the medicine will be revealed to him before it’s done its job, so she grabs hold of his wrist. “Don’t put it on your face! This medicine is too strong for that. It’s dangerous!”
“Let go of me!” the tanuki squeals. “Please let go, I beg you! You don’t understand. You don’t know how it feels, you don’t know the heartbreaking experiences this skin color has caused me in my thirty-odd years. Let go. Let go of my wrist! Please!”
The tanuki finally gives the rabbit a swift kick, breaking loose, then smears the ointment on his face with such speed that his hand is a mere blur.
“The thing about my face is, my features—my eyes and nose and everything—aren’t bad. I mean, not bad at all, if I do say so myself, but even so I always felt inferior, see, just because I’m a little darker than most. So if this could fix that... Wait. Wow! That’s too much. It stings! That’s some strong medicine, all right. Then again, I have a feeling it’s got to be strong to whiten my skin. Whoa. Too much. I can take it, though. Hell, next time she sees me she’ll gaze at my face, all dreamy-eyed, and—woo, hoo, hoo!—I’ll tell you what, don’t blame me if she ends up lovesick. Ah! It’s sizzling! Well, the stuff works, all right. Might as well go ahead with this. Put it on my back, will you? Put it everywhere, in fact—all over my body. I don’t care if it kills me, as long as I die with whiter skin. Go ahead, slap it on. Put it on nice and thick. Don’t spare the stuff!”
A truly tragic scene. But there is no limit to a proud and beautiful maiden’s capacity for cruelty. It’s almost demonic. The rabbit calmly stands there and slathers the famous red hot pepper paste on the tanuki’s burns, transporting him instantly to a world of excruciating pain.
“Nnngh! Nah! No big deal. I can really feel it working, though. Whoa, that’s too much! Water. Give me water. Where am I? Is this... Hell? Forgive me. What did I ever do to end up here? They were going to make me into tanuki stew, I tell you! It’s not my fault. For thirty-odd years, just because I’m somewhat on the swarthy side, the women have always ignored me, and just because I have a healthy appetite... Oh, the humiliation I’ve suffered! I’m so alone. Look at me. I’m a good person. My features aren’t bad, I’d say.”
The pain is such that this pathetic, delirious rant ends with him losing consciousness completely.
But the tanuki’s misfortunes don’t end there. Even I, the author, find myself sighing as I continue the tale. It’s doubtful whether there’s another example in Japanese history of such a cataclysmic ending to a career. Having dodged the tanuki stew scenario, he scarcely has time to rejoice before he’s inexplicably scorched to within an inch of his life on Crackle-Burn Mountain. And then, after somehow managing to crawl back to his den, where he holes up writhing in agony, he’s treated to a plaster of hot pepper paste on his most severe burns. Look at him lying there now, passed out from the resultant pain. Next he’ll be tricked into boarding a boat of mud with a one-way ticket to the bottom of Lake Kawaguchi. No bright spots in the story whatsoever. One might venture to describe the affair as “woman trouble,” but woman trouble of the meanest and most primitive sort, devoid of any panache or sophistication.
The tanuki proceeds to hole up in his burrow for three days, barely breathing, zigzagging along the border between life and death, but on the fourth day he is seized with a ferocious hunger. No sight could be more pathetic than that of him crawling from his hole with the aid of a stick and mumbling incoherently as he staggers about snatching up anything digestible. But the tanuki is big-boned and sturdily built, and before ten days have passed he’s completely recovered. His appetite is as healthy as ever, his libido too rears its head, and he ill-advisedly sets out for the rabbit’s hut.
“I came to visit,” he says, blushing, and adds a lecherous laugh: “Woo hoo!”
“My!”
The rabbit greets him with a look of blatant loathing. A look that says, What, you again? Or, rather, worse than that. What the hell are you doing here? You’ve got some nerve. No, even worse. Damn it all! It’s the one-man plague! No, that still doesn’t seem to express it. The extreme antipathy so plainly written on the rabbit’s face reads something more along the lines of: You filthy, stinking pig! Die!
It often happens, however, that the uninvited guest is oblivious to his host’s eagerness to be rid of him. This is a true mystery of human psychology. You and I too, dear reader, must take care. When we reluctantly set out for someone’s house, thinking all the while that we don’t want to go, that we’re sure to end up bored to distraction, it’s often the case that the people we’re going to visit are genuinely delighted to have us. But suppose we’re thinking: Ah, that house is my home away from home. In fact, it’s more like home than my own place. It’s my only shelter from the storm! What then? We set out for the visit in high spirits, but in this case, my frie
nds, we’re very likely to be considered a nuisance, an excrescence, and a hound from hell and to find our hosts repeatedly checking their watches. Thinking of someone else’s house as our shelter from the storm is, perhaps, evidence of a certain imbecility, but the fact remains that we often labor under astonishing misconceptions when calling on others. Unless we have a particular mission in mind, it’s probably best to refrain from visiting even our most intimate friends at home.
Anyone who doubts this advice of the author’s need only look at our poor tanuki. Right now he’s committing this very gaffe, in spades. The rabbit says, “My!” and makes a sour face, but the tanuki is utterly oblivious to her displeasure. To him, that “My!” is an innocent cry of joyful surprise at his unexpected visit. He experiences a thrill at the sound of it and interprets the rabbit’s furrowed brow as evidence of empathy and concern for his misfortune on Crackle-Burn Mountain.
“Thanks,” he says, though no kind words have been offered. “No need to worry. I’m fine now. The gods are on my side, y’know. I was born with good luck. That old Crackle-Burn Mountain means no more to me than a river monkey’s fart, which, by the way, they say river monkey meat is delicious—one of these days I’m gonna get me a taste of that. Well, I digress, but that was some shock the other day, wasn’t it? I mean, what a conflagration! Were you all right? You look fine. Thank goodness you escaped unharmed.”
“I wasn’t unharmed,” the rabbit says with a pointed display of petulance. “You’re a fine person—running away and leaving me there trapped in that fire! I inhaled so much smoke I almost died, and I don’t mind saying I thought some awfully hard thoughts about you. It’s in times of great peril that a person’s true character shows itself. Now I know exactly where your heart is.”
“I’m so sorry! Forgive me! The truth is, I got badly burned myself. Maybe I don’t have any gods on my side after all—I mean, I went through a living hell! It’s not that I forgot you were there, but it all happened so fast—my back was on fire, and I didn’t have time to look for you because, I mean, my back was on fire! Please try to understand. I’m not an unfeeling person. Burns are no joke, I’ll tell you. And then that Wizard’s Gold or Winter’s Cold or whatever it was—terrible stuff. That is one nasty medicine. And it doesn’t have any effect at all on a dark complexion.”
“Dark complexion?”
“No. What? Dark, syrupy medicine, really potent stuff. I got it from this strange little fellow who looked a lot like you. He said it was free, so I thought, you know, you never know till you try something. So I had him plaster the stuff on me, but, oh man, I’ll tell you what, you’ve got to be careful with free medicine. Take my advice. I felt like I had a million little whirlwinds shooting out of my head, and then I dropped like a sack of beans.”
“Hmph,” the rabbit snorts scornfully. “You deserve it. That’s what you get for being such a cheapskate. ‘The medicine was free, so I tried it.’ How low can you sink! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“Don’t be mean,” the tanuki murmurs, but his feelings don’t seem particularly hurt. He’s basking in the warm, euphoric sensation of being near the one he loves. He stands at ease, surveying his surroundings with those cloudy, dead-fish eyes, snatching the occasional bug from the ground and inhaling it as he makes his case. “I’m a lucky man, though, I’ll tell you. No matter what happens, I always come out alive. So who knows? Maybe I do have a god or two on my side. I’m glad you were all right, though, and now I’m completely recovered from my burns, and here we are relaxing together and having a nice conversation. It’s like a dream come true!”
The rabbit wants only for the tanuki to leave. His mere presence makes her feel as if she’s suffocating. Eager to get him away from her hut, she quickly devises her next fiendish plot.
“By the way,” she says, “did you know that Lake Kawaguchi is full of tasty, tasty carp?”
“No. Is that true?” The tanuki’s eyes light up. “When I was just three years old, my mother brought home a carp and let me try some, and it was dee-licious! But carp live in the water, and, well, see, it’s not that I’m not good with my hands, because I am, but I can’t catch ’em. They’re just too fast. So even though I know how delicious carp are, I haven’t had a chance to eat any these thirty-odd—I mean, hahahaha—that’s my brother talking again. My brother likes carp too, see, so—”
“Is that so?” the rabbit says, her thoughts elsewhere. “Well, I have no desire to eat carp myself, but if you’re so fond of them, I don’t mind going with you to catch some.”
“Really?” The tanuki beams. “But carp, they’re fast, I tell you. I nearly drowned once trying to catch one,” he says, inadvertently confessing to a past humiliation. “You know a good way to snag ’em?”
“You just scoop them up with a net. It’s easy. These days all the big ones are swarming off the shore of Ugashima Island. Let’s go. Can you row a boat?”
“Hmm.” The tanuki sighs thoughtfully. “It’s not that I can’t row. I mean, if I wanted to, hell, nothing to it, but—”
“Great,” the rabbit says, pretending to believe his tenuous boast. “That’s perfect. I have a little boat of my own, but it’s too small for both of us. Besides, it’s just a flimsy thing made with thin wooden planks, and it leaks. Very dangerous. I don’t care about me, but the last thing I want to do is put your life in danger, so let’s work together to build a boat just for you. You’ll need a sturdy one, made of mud.”
“That’s so kind of you! You know what? I think I’m going to cry. Allow me to weep. I don’t know why I’m like this, so easily moved to tears,” he says and adds, with a theatrical sob in his voice, a brazen request. “But would you mind making that good, sturdy boat for me by yourself? Please? I’d really appreciate it. While you’re doing that, I’ll throw a lunch together. I bet I’d make a first-rate galley cook.”
“No doubt.” The rabbit nods quickly, pretending to see the logic of his self-centered assessment. The tanuki smiles contentedly: life is sweet. And with that smile, his fate is sealed. What the tanuki doesn’t realize is that people who affect to believe all our nonsense often harbor evil and insidious plots in their hearts. But ignorance is bliss, as they say, and right now he’s very pleased with himself indeed.
Together they walk to the lakeshore. Lake Kawaguchi is a pale, glassy expanse today, unmarred by a single ripple. The rabbit begins shaping clay from the shore into boat form, and the tanuki thanks her repeatedly as he scuttles this way and that, focused exclusively on gathering the contents of his lunch. By the time an evening breeze has awakened wavelets over the entire surface of the lake, the small clay boat, gleaming like burnished steel, is ready for launching.
“Not bad, not bad!” The tanuki prances up to the boat and first places his oilcan-size lunch box carefully inside. “You’re a resourceful little thing, aren’t you? I mean, you made this beautiful boat in the blink of an eye! It’s like a miracle!” Even as he spews this transparently self-serving flattery, inwardly his lust is being augmented by a burgeoning greed. He reflects that with a skilled and hard-working wife like this he might be able to live in ease and luxury, and he firmly resolves to stick to this woman for the rest of his life. “Oof!” he says as he boards the craft. “I bet you’re good at rowing too. It’s certainly not that I don’t know how to row—I mean, come on. But today I’d like to admire the skill of my woman.” Insufferably presumptuous. “Back in the day, they used to call me a master oarsman, a genius with the oar and so forth, but today I think I’d rather lie back and watch. Why don’t you just tie the front of my boat to the back of yours? That way the boats too, like us, will be bound as one, to the end. If we die, we’ll die together. Baby, say you’ll never leave me.” He continues to ramble on in this crude and self-deluded manner as he stretches out on the bottom of his mud boat.
Told to tie the boats together, the rabbit freezes for a moment, wondering if the fool is on to her, but a glance at his face assures her that all is well. He’s already
on the path to dreamland with a lecherous smirk on his face, still babbling idiotically as he drops off. “Wake me if you catch any carp. Dee-licious... Me, I’m thirty-seven....” The rabbit laughs through her nose, ties the tanuki’s boat to hers, and spears the water with her oar. The two boats glide away from shore.
The pine forest of Ugashima looks as if it’s on fire in the setting sun. And here’s where the author pauses to display his knowledge. Did you know that the design adorning packs of Shikishima cigarettes was based on a sketch of this very skyline, the pine forest of Ugashima Island? I have this on the word of a gentleman who should know and pass it on to the reader as reliable information. Of course, Shikishima cigarettes have disappeared now, which means that this digression isn’t likely to be of any interest to younger readers whatsoever. Pretty useless knowledge I’ve unveiled here, now that I think about it. I guess the best I can hope for is that those readers who are thirty-odd years or older will sigh and think, Ah, yes—those pines, idly recalling the scenic old cigarette packets along with their memories of geisha encounters or whatever.
Well. Be that as it may, the rabbit gazes raptly at the sunset over Ugashima.
“What a beautiful view,” she murmurs.
This, I need scarcely point out, is very disconcerting. One would think that not even the worst sort of villain would have the composure to appreciate scenic beauty just before committing the cruelest of crimes, but our lovely sixteen-year-old maiden is truly enthralled with that spectacular sunset. It’s a thin line between innocence and evil. Men who can drool over a nauseatingly narcissistic maiden who’s never known suffering and gush about the purity of youth and what have you ought to watch their steps. That “purity of youth” often turns out, as in the case of this rabbit, to be a frenzied dance—an indecipherable, sensual mishmash that casually combines murderous hatred with self-intoxication. It’s the foam on a glass of beer, and it’s the greatest danger there is. Valuing physical sensations above moral considerations is evidence of either mental deficiency or demonic evil. Take, for example, those American movies that were so popular all around the world awhile back. They were full of “pure” young males and females who were overly sensitive to tactile sensations and juddered nervously about like spring-wound devices. Is it going too far to say that all this “purity of youth” business can be traced back to America? Movies like Love on Skis, or whatever it was. And in the background someone’s coolly committing some dimwitted crime. It’s either idiocy or the work of Satan. Of course, maybe Satan has been an idiot all along. I’m not certain about that, but I’m fairly sure that with this digression I’ve managed to turn our petite, slender, lithe-limbed sixteen-year-old female rabbit, whom we earlier compared to the heart-quickening moon goddess Artemis, into something unspeakably dreary. Did someone say “idiocy”? Can’t be helped.