The Master Puppeteer: Chapter 4

“If I don't curse you, it’s because you are your father’s only living child, though to you that means nothing, nothing. But"—she folded the sash and jabbed it between the flap of her kimono—“but I curse the day I bore you."

Jiro tried to smile. And, unfeeling wretch that he was, he knew he would be able to get down the whole bowl.

“And small Teiji”—Kinshi's chopsticks settled on the last boy—“he is skillful of hand, but not of mouth. We are very fond of him, mind you. But in an emergency we don't ask him for explanations, for it takes him from one tide to the next to complete one coherent sentence. Am I unjust, little fellow?"

Teiji and Minoru laughed out loud and even the ugly Wada grinned grudgingly.

Jiro remembered how Kinshi had stood unflinching under Yoshida's rod.

A historical drama was to be presented, but not one of the stuffy ones the merchants found tedious.

"Don’t you know that one? Akoya, who is a courtesan and musician, hides her lover who escaped from the battle, and when the enemy soldiers come looking for him, she says she doesn’t know anything about it."

"You’d never believe how he doted on me when I was small. He was worse than my mother. And I,” Kinshi said softly, "I worshiped him in those days.”

The idle chatter stopped at once.

Kinshi only spoke to give directions in a curt businesslike tone, which sounded more like that of the elder Yoshida than the boy himself would have liked to realize.

Jiro's misgivings must have registered on his face because Kinshi gave him a friendly swat. “Don't worry. We all learn here by the honorable path of horrible mistakes."

He got the curtain pulled twice without mishap and would have relaxed a bit and watched the play except that the thought struck him that one of the left-hand operators might be capable of forgetting—or worse that he might misinterpret some inadvertent movement of a hooded head.

There was no one waiting in the wings when Akoya began her concert for the inquisitors.

At Jiro’s request, Kinshi did not again assign him to curtain duty for the time being. He filched from his father’s house copies of the texts for the next two plays so that Jiro could memorize them in advance.

“That,” said Kinshi, smiling grimly, “merely confirms Yoshida’s opinion of me. I shall come to a bad end, fool that I am. Alas!” he said in mock dismay.

His only son is a fool, currently masquerading as a puppeteer, to be sure, but how long can the travesty endure?

His only son is a fool, currently masquerading as a puppeteer, to be sure, but how long can the travesty endure?

"As Mochida with his store of homey proverbs might say: ‘The crow who thinks to imitate the cormorant—drowns.’”

"As Mochida with his store of homey proverbs might say: ‘The crow who thinks to imitate the cormorant—drowns.’”

He dragged out the syllables of the word with a melodramatic flourish.

He dragged out the syllables of the word with a melodramatic flourish.

The five boys groped about sleepily for their trousers. They dressed and began to fold up their quilts and put them away into the closets.

Five pairs of disembodied puppet legs hung in a line from the rafter, and Kinshi and Teiji were already hard at work, making their puppet legs walk or stamp or stand or sit perfectly still, according to Mochida's command.

“All right, you three, you've lolled about long enough this morning. Quickly now, get in place. The character for today is Watonai in The Battles of Coxinga. This is the scene when he is walking on the beach with his wife. Now he's not in military dress, but he's still a soldier and a hero. Don't forget that.”

Yoshida seated himself across from Mochida so he could watch the front of the legs, rather than having them somewhat obscured by the rear of the operators.

It was a busy season for the rice merchants and for the tax collectors, who with haste—prompted by the smallness of the harvest, no doubt—arrived from Edo a week before they were expected and demanded the Shogun’s portion of each merchant’s rice and payment in silver coin for the long trip back to Edo.

Imagine the merchants’ dismay when another troop of collectors descended the following week and declared the first tax collection to have been a fraud perpetrated by bandits with forged credentials.

Imagine the merchants’ dismay when another troop of collectors descended the following week and declared the first tax collection to have been a fraud perpetrated by bandits with forged credentials.

More than two hundred and fifty years earlier, his predecessor, the Shogun leyasu, had issued an edict prohibiting the Christian religion.

More than two hundred and fifty years earlier, his predecessor, the Shogun leyasu, had issued an edict prohibiting the Christian religion.