The Master Puppeteer: Chapters 5–7

Thanks to Kinshi, who regularly “borrowed” the texts for the upcoming performances, Jiro was memorizing the plays as he needed to and no longer had to stand petrified against the backstage wall waiting for a nod from a kindly left-hand operator to indicate at which moment the curtain should be yanked.

He would be hidden by the waist-high apron toward the front of the stage area, but it would be his hand holding the giant cloth clam in which the snipe’s beak was caught.

After Watonai’s long discourse on the parable of the clam and the snipe—like two warring nations destroying each other and laying themselves open to attack from a third powerful force—Komutsu took her long tortoiseshell hairpin and pried open the clam shell, freeing the snipe.

After Watonai’s long discourse on the parable of the clam and the snipe—like two warring nations destroying each other and laying themselves open to attack from a third powerful force—Komutsu took her long tortoiseshell hairpin and pried open the clam shell, freeing the snipe.

Somewhere Yoshida’s piercing black eyes were watching from under his hood.

But it wasn’t the snipe’s farewell that eventually got Kinshi in trouble. It was a case of stomach grippe that came upon the foot operator Kawada one afternoon during the middle of the third act.

Kinshi even persuaded the reluctant Wada to join the lantern-lit revels, and they all laughed as a teacupful of the potent sake raced down Minoru’s throat like water into a rain barrel.

Kinshi had faced a rigorous examination onstage today and he had passed.

Except that into the feeling of fear and respect that Jiro had for Yoshida, there appeared a new strain—hatred. It was like a rivulet of hot, molten lava deep within a mountain.

It was about six weeks before the profits began to dwindle and signal Yoshida that it was time to start work on a new production.

Jiro doubted that Yoshida would ever endanger his profits by putting on a play that might offend his largely mercantile audience, but to his surprise Kinshi disagreed.

“It depends on the text,” he said. “If he likes the text, he’ll offend the Shogun himself. Besides, it’s set in the sixteenth century. They won’t be smart enough to see any contemporary relevance to a two-hundred-year-old story.”

It teased Jiro’s imagination to picture little wizened Okada dreaming up stories of brave robber barons and dictating them to an apprentice.

“I don’t know.” Kinshi blushed. “I’ve always stolen for ours. Yoshida has kept them stacked by the alcove as long as I can remember. It was easy for me, and it helped the others.”

Was Kinshi really so nonchalant about stealing his father’s property?

He’d hoped to figure out some kind of present to take to the chief reciter, but since fate decreed otherwise, he straightened his shoulders and marched behind his escort.

Tozo shoved the shutters open, letting in the pale winter sunshine. It was not strong enough to rout much of the damp, but somehow it made Jiro feel better than sitting in the dark.

Fortunately, there was no tantalizing smell of cooking escaping from the theater.

What Jiro wanted to do was to go back to the kitchen and get something for Taro to eat. But he stifled the impulse.

The boys beat the glutinous rice until Mrs. Yoshida pronounced it ready to make into dumplings for the New Year soup and little cakes which could be toasted over the charcoal.

There were no quilts down in the adjoining mat room where his parents usually slept.

Jiro carried the cooking brazier into the backyard and made a fire, and when the noxious fumes burned off, he carried it back inside and put a kettle of water on.

He hardly recognized her. Her eyes were wild, her hair disheveled, her kimono nearly torn off at the shoulder.

Now he had his lack of piety to add to the other troublesome omens of the day.

The boys waited impatiently as their elders pressed forward to read the master’s amended instructions for Okada’s play.

Wada shrugged. With the capricious Yoshida, one never knew.

But dancing! The very word sent terror through his skull. Dancing with all those delicate mincing steps, those turns, coordinating everything perfectly with the head and hands.

Sick with apprehension, he almost gave up eating.

In the mornings Jiro practiced with Mochida and Ueno. At first, Ueno did not attempt to hide his vexation with Jiro's inexperience.

For the benefit of the agents, Fusamu apparently goes mad with grief and begins to dance—at first sedately but gradually becoming more and more wild.

It takes all three agents to subdue her, and while they are holding her to keep her from harming herself, the "country kin” carry out the "body.”

There were none of the poisons of resentment or anxiety shooting between the three operators now. The trust, the oneness, was taken for granted, and complete attention could be riveted on the doll.

When the scene was over—Joman having been carried out by his cohorts to the shrieks of insane mourning that Toyotake put into Fusamu’s mouth—the three of them hurried Fusamu off the stage.

Mochida jostled him as if by accident, but Jiro knew it was the operator’s way of thanking him.

Word had spread even among the elite that Okada had produced something worth seeing, so the high-level samurai, whose code forbade their indulging in anything so vulgar as the theater, donned their large woven hats for disguise and tried to melt inconspicuously into the crowd sitting on the mat floor of the Hanaza.

Word had spread even among the elite that Okada had produced something worth seeing, so the high-level samurai, whose code forbade their indulging in anything so vulgar as the theater, donned their large woven hats for disguise and tried to melt inconspicuously into the crowd sitting on the mat floor of the Hanaza.

Word had spread even among the elite that Okada had produced something worth seeing, so the high-level samurai, whose code forbade their indulging in anything so vulgar as the theater, donned their large woven hats for disguise and tried to melt inconspicuously into the crowd sitting on the mat floor of the Hanaza.

Yet these very men who swore publicly that they would put an end to “that devil Saburo” or die in the attempt, these same men held their fat bellies and guffawed to see Joman wriggle his neck from under the ax and make a laughingstock of his pursuers.

Yet these very men who swore publicly that they would put an end to “that devil Saburo” or die in the attempt, these same men held their fat bellies and guffawed to see Joman wriggle his neck from under the ax and make a laughingstock of his pursuers.

So as a result of the combined popularity and notoriety of the play, the Hanaza was doing the best business in town.