Author: HATSU Akiko
Imprint: Nemurenu Yoru no Kimyou na Hanashi Comics
Publisher: Asahi Sonorama
Reviewed by Jeanne
There's a Chinese TV series called The Grand Gate, about four generations of a family in China in the first decades of the 20th century. It contains the following scene:
"The father and the son are both completely naked on the bed, putting all manners of writing implements -- brushes, inkstones -- under the comforter. Then both of them climb in together under the cover with the brushes and inkstones, and wriggle around vigorously.
As the father explains, this is to rub off some human essence on the brushes and inkstones. Warmed this way, the brushes and stones acquire a bit of the spirit of the owners, and produce more spirited calligraphy and delicate paintings."
That's how it goes in Hatsu Akiko's world as well. Objects pick up human essence from the people who use them. Sometimes indeed they have that essence from the start, transmitted by the one who made them. Objects have souls which manifest to those that can see them, often as doe-eyed youths or slender maidens but occasionally as bug-eyed creatures in Heian court robes, reminiscent of Ima Ichiko's youkai. The stories in the Rainy Willow series are about how human feelings interact with the feelings of their possessions, and how, in general, these love affairs between object and owner act to console people in the world of tears we humans live in.
The series is set in late Meiji, 1890's more or less, when human beings had quite enough things to cry over. People have tuberculosis, that classic disease of Meiji literati (and everyone else, no doubt.) Children or parents are apt to die suddenly and unexpectedly. There's the fall-out from the Meiji social reforms of a few decades earlier- families gone bankrupt, chronic poverty, people selling themselves or being sold into some form of sexual slavery because of it, vicious loan-sharks, back-breaking labour, the sad need to sell family heirlooms to eat. Even the rich and fortunate have their sorrows- loveless marriages, parting from loved places, even simple loneliness.
The central character in these stories is Ren, grandson of the old man who runs the Rainy Willow Antique Store. Ren and his grandfather see things ordinary people don't; Ren also understands the heart of things, and his grandfather has a way of leaving him to deal with the trouble when the heart of things becomes annoying, as when oh-let's-say a rancorous spirit makes it impossible for antiquarians (like Grandfather) even to enter some ancient family's storehouse, let alone get their hands on the treasures there.
General overview of the series and review of vol 1 can be found here.
Volume 2
ISBN4-257-9022-01
The first two volumes of this series feel the most 'period' to me, in presenting what one feels Meiji society must have been like. The first story is about a well-to-do young girl who is given a mirror on a stand, in which she sees a young man from the Shogunate period. She begins to dream about him and becomes caught up in his life. He's the heir to a clan lord, with a sickly mother who doesn't care to see him, and a loyal servant that the older servants caution their young lord against getting too close to. Obsessed with this dead youth the young girl becomes absent-minded and abstracted, and all her friends tease her about her secret love. But the young man's spirit is also aware of hers and the ordinary life she leads- school, shopping, marriage arrangements. One of her friends becomes engaged to an officer, a marriage obviously arranged by the families, and the group of girls discuss what kind of man they want to marry with an odd combination of romanticism- 'if you love him it doesn't matter what kind of man he is'- and practicality. This is a charming tale of attachment and possession with a couple of twists along the way.
The second story is about two little spirits making mischief in the Rainy Willow storehouse. But back of this is the story of a woman and her foster-sister, the child of her wetnurse. The woman marries into a well-to-do family but has no children, leading to talk of divorce. Her foster-sister marries a tradesman in Yokohama and has children immediately, but both babies die young. The middle-class woman visits the merchant-class one after the death of the second child, to find her foster-sister resigned: 'I must be working off some karma from a past life. There couldn't have been a strong tie between us if they could leave me so easily.'
The fourth story tells of a family, ex-samurai turned business and apparently prosperous in its new line of work, until a shipwreck takes the life of the founder's brother and his son. Founder dies of an apoplexy on hearing the news; his wife, aware that she has TB, kills herself so as not to be a burden to her daughter, and also because she knows her daughter will be sold to the Yoshiwara to pay the family's debts. So it happens. The daughter, being from good stoic samurai stock, endures what she has to endure and rises to the top geisha rank of 'oiran' before she suddenly retires to go live in isolation- because she too has tuberculosis and only a short time to live. She has a secret that she has told no-one- she was in love with her cousin. When he left on that fatal sea voyage she gave him the Empress doll from the family's set of dolls as a replacement for herself, and it sank into the ocean with him. Now the set has come to the Rainy Willow store, because no dollmaster is willing to make a replacement empress doll for it. It's Ren who finds the missing Empress to make the set complete.
Vol 2 introduces us to a couple of characters who will appear in other stories. One is Oushu-sama, the head of a neighbouring Buddhist temple to which the Rainy Willow store has close ties. No surprise, really, since many of their antiques are possessed to the point of being unusable in daily life and must be dedicated to a temple. The second character is a nameless forger of ceramics who appears in the last story. Something of a thug, he also has a peculiarity- he puts the date on his forgeries for anyone to find who cares to look for it. He says he's in it for the money, but his actions suggest there's also a certain contempt for the nouveau riche Meiji collectors who want the label, as it were, and have no sense of the object itself. Ren, who can tell a forgery just by touching it ('It doesn't feel old') naturally defeats him.
Volume 3
ISBN4-257-90273-6
In the first story, The Sorrows of Mr. Kyousuke, we meet another recurring character, the medical student Kyousuke. A friend of Ren's, he's straightforward and naïve (both adjectives being virtues in this world.) The story tells what happens when a Chinese inkstone falls in love with him. Yes, the akogare starts with the object, as it does in several stories in this volume.
In the third story we meet our thug from vol 2. He's Seijiro, a man with many aliases; a master potter, heir to a distinguished artist's name, he became a forger of antiquities for mysterious reasons we're not yet told. Sei is a charmer and a bad lot, sponging off women and the rich and the denizens of the collectors' world. I believe we're supposed to find him emotionally intriguing in his fall from the pure state of creative grace, and sexually attractive in his 'treat 'em rough and make 'em like it' way. Sorry; men who order women about and hit them when they don't obey may be called otoko-rashii in Japan, but here we call them something else.
This volume has two especially intriguing stories. The last one in the book is about a young man from the Kansai who inherits his family's famous flute but falls on misfortune and becomes a day-labourer in the rough world of Edo. Keep your eye on the nice neighbour who brings him home after he gets beaten up by his workmates; there's a version of him in Ima Ichiko. The long middle story is about another haunted kura (storehouse). This one is possessed by the soul of an onnagata, an actor who plays women's roles. The story is that the actor was cast off by his wealthy patron, murdered him, and then committed suicide. In the course of the action we discover that the actor lost a leg in an accident and became the boy toy of a rich kabuki fan in order to live. The role he was going to perform just before the accident was Doujouji, about the woman whose lust for a young monk turns her into a snake who kills the object of her passion when he refuses her. When the actor's patron suddenly becomes the heir to his family's wealth he naturally has to get married, and the actor waits to hear that he will be dismissed from the man's life. He feels himself turning into the vengeful snake spirit from Doujouji, but there's a twist here that Ren at last resolves. This one is sweet and melancholy, like the best ghost stories.
Volume 4
ISBN4-257-90291-4
An extremely elegant set of stories about an extremely elegant set of objects- the folding screen made by a Japanese woman living in England who knows she will never see her native land again; a mosquito net embroidered with autumn plants in which a young consumptive sleeps; a bowl with a pattern of chrysanthemums that rivets the attention of a dilettante collector whose tastes so far have only caused him trouble; a collection of bunraku dolls laid away in the family storehouse of an orphaned child; and a gorgeous folding screen showing the willows at Uji bridge, that stands in the bedroom of a young married woman who has fallen into a sleep from which she doesn't wake. This is one of my favorite volumes in the series, and illustrates most clearly the theme objects bringing salvation to their owners.
Volume 5
ISBN4-257-90330-9
This volume introduces a character whose story will become a main part of the series. Yutsuki is the young assistant to a master who mends and restores antiques. This man too once dabbled in forgery, like Seijirou, and now the shady types he used to work for are threatening him to make him start again. The antiques at the Rainy Willow store have a certain strong interest in Yutsuki's fate- something special in her touch arouses their sympathy. Thanks to a scarf that Ren gives her one cold night, embroidered with a lion, the criminals' attempts at blackmail are foiled. Yutsuki has a birthmark on the side of her face and carries a protective amulet bag with a fragment of pottery inside, the one possession left her by her mother who put her up for adoption when she was five.
The second story tells what happens when Seijirou goes to the country where he is unexpectedly ambushed by memories of his orpahned youth, his adoption into the family of potters and the unhappy story of the oldest son of that family- all because of a suitcase of clothes left in the room where he's staying. We also discover that there's a connection to Yutsuki that gets worked out in the course of the following volumes.
The last story is also about Yutsuki. The sight of a magnolia tree in bloom on the grounds of an abandoned temple calls up a vague memory of early childhood, visiting a similar temple with her mother. In company with Ren she begins to trace her past before she was given up for adoption.
I'm also fond of the third story, about a young girl who sees Ren with a Chinese birdcage, setting free a lovely bird that for some reason keeps returning to the cage. But the bird isn't there. Ren gives her the birdcage and she carries it through the vicissitudes that the daughter of a conservative family living in a conservative age naturally experiences when she tries to live her own life. This story reads very 1890's and of the period to me.
Volume 6
ISBN4-257-90352-X
This one has a series of stories about obsessive emotions and the trouble they can make. The painting of a young boy makes the artist's wife so jealous that she tries to destroy it. A woman's possessiveness tries to turn her grandson into a replica of her dead daughter; the boy in turn seeks refuge in a netsuke he gets as a present from Ren. And then there's Kyousuke, pursued by yet another strong-willed exquisite antique. This one makes him tea and brings him dinner, which is nice; but to take on human form an object needs energy, and where can the energy come from but the man she's in love with...?
The last story is a very satisfying one about a well-to-do young woman who was engaged to be married. Her fiancé died in an accident and her father proved to be bankrupt. She's now the possession of her father's chief creditor and is only saved from becoming his mistress by the fact of being in mourning for her father. This immunity lasts only for the year of mourning, supposing she doesn't die of melancholy before that. But meanwhile a man with the same name and appearance as her dead fiancé is searching for a bowl that was a present to her from him. The woman now owns a forgery and the real bowl is in the hands of that master forger Seijirou.
Volume 7
ISBN4-257-90352-X
This begins with an intriguing story about the woman proprietor of a famous restaurant, 'in her prime', who is always accompanied by a some good-looking young man or other. She comes to the store because she's heard Ren's grandfather has a lacquered stand just the right size to hold the stone leopard that's the restaurant's symbol. The story runs that when thieves broke in one night the leopard became real and frightened them insensible. She thinks the leopard is responsible for her success, but when her current young man, Tamon, tells her it's due to her own strength, she dismisses him out of hand-- and turns her sights on Ren. 'In three or four years, maybe...' she muses. But Tamon isn't finished with her- and Tamon isn't what he seems to be either.
There's an amusing story of the baby mysteriously abandoned on the shop doorstep that Ren takes in. 'If a child's parents are at the 'dangerous age' (39 or thereabouts, since by the reckoning of the period you were one year old on the day you were born and turned two at the next new year) or if a child is born after several have died, the custom is to 'abandon' him for someone else to 'adopt.'' Then the kid goes back home to his own parents because the bad luck has presumably been worked off. In this case the bad luck involves the fears of the child's stepmother, and aren't what you think; and the person who does the abandoning is a bossy guardian charm in the shape of a dog.
In other stories a man dreams he's in a house protected by a bank of amaryllis. Whatever's beyond the flowers can't reach him- but Ren can, because the dream is Ren's doing. The remaining stories are further developments in the saga of Seijirou and Yutsuki. Seijirou has promised to look for Yutsuki, but his first efforts turn up an imposter. He then locates the real Yutsuki and has his agent tell her who she is, but he drags his feet about meeting with her directly- this in spite of the fact that they've come across each other by accident more than once. In the last story Ren shows up at the geisha house where Seijirou is staying to suggest that maybe he should work up a little gumption-- this while in the process of pacifying an angry ghost on the side.