Prologue – The ground

The French Revolution wanted to make everybody tu. Here is a resolution passed on 24 Brumaire, Year II (November 14, 1793), by the department of the Tarn, a poor, mountainous area in southern France:

Considering that the eternal principles of equality forbid that a citizen say “vous” to another citizen, who replies by calling him “toi”…decrees that the word “vous,” when it is a question of the singular [rather than the plural, which takes vous], is from this moment banished from the language of the free French and will on all occasions be replaced by the word “tu” or “toi.”

(Darnton, Robert. (1990). What was revolutionary about the French Revolution?. Waco, Tex : Baylor University Press, Markham Press Fund.)

vous – “You” as used with those above in rank. Formal, respectful also distant.

tu – “You” as used with those of equal rank. Informal, can be disrespectful also intimate.

Prologue –  The ground

It was just yesterday that I was on the bus with my daughter, on the way back from the dentist. The sun, yet to set, made the empty seats even more apparent as the two of us sat side-by-side on a two-person seat, the window seat surrendered to my daughter. She had just become nine recently and the animality of her youth was gradually disappearing day by day as she emerged more and more into a human. Though, she was still at that stage where she was more aping a person rather than actually being one. It was then that my daughter asked me a question with a cheeky grin on her face.

“Why is the sky blue?”

Right then, my mind travelled more than twenty years back. Back to the distant winter of my second year in middle school.

“In the third trimester of my third year, a transfer student appeared.” I tried to continue the story from there but it just wouldn’t go smoothly no matter how many times I erased and rewrote. The time contained in the twenty-two years since then has changed so many things.

Take the place where I lived then. Not a ‘town’ but a ‘place’. I can describe it no other way. A large commuter town with a 4km radius: that was Sama New Town in 2009. Nowadays, development has done its course in the town so there are all those shops and office buildings; but back then, it was still a simple commuter town. Housing complexes, a school and a shopping centre. That was all that place was. It was my home, the centre of my world, and the only reality I knew.

There’s a memory I have from then.

              One day as I was absently watching a variety show, I saw a little girl on TV be asked her dreams of the future. She answered that she wanted to open a small shop. To me, that sounded as fantastical as someone saying they wanted to become a princess. There was no way I could have known, nor could I have imagined then that she probably lived in a place with many small shops. The Sama New Town in 2009 did not, at least to my knowledge then, have a single small shop.

Small shops were to the me then, a fantasy akin to magic and princesses.

So many things have changed since then. So much so that just deciding where to begin the story is difficult. Let’s return to that question: “Why is the sky blue?” This is one thing that’s never changed. The sky is blue even now.

The one who taught me just how fearful a question that was, was no other than Mana.

＊

Etou Mana?

E-to-u Ma-na.

Hmmm…. Mmmmmmm… Hmmm… It really isn’t much of a name now, is it? Don’t ask whether it really felt like like it was at the time. The point is, I wanted the awe I felt then to be the name’s fault.

If I had been a thirty-seven-year-old woman then, perhaps I would’ve said it was the flyer’s design that impressed me. It was a well-made flyer. Good enough to make you want to use it as a poster and stick onto the wall of your room.

Light brown wavy hair, a green turtleneck sweater and navy blue text displaying the catchphrase: “I will become the Blessed One”. The bottom third of the flyer had a manga explaining what a “Blessed One” was.

“In death, man may go to heaven, or they may go to hell. He who determines their fate is Lord Enma. He weighs the weight of your deeds throughout your lifetime. Your good deeds and bad deeds compared by their weight. Should your good deeds be heavier, off you go to heaven. Should your bad deeds be heavier, off you go to hell. But should you lack even a straw’s worth of weight in good deeds to tip the scales, hell awaits…

A dreadful situation indeed. Fear not, rely on the Blessed One.

Collect Blessed Fudas and tip the scales. You’ll be on course for heaven!”

Really! I see, I see. So that’s what they mean by the blessings of the Blessed One. A concept that frequently appears in manga and anime: that’s how I saw the Blessed One. Now then, let’s look at one movie from 1971, “The Wandering Knife: Run, Kumakichi”. Its protagonist is a wandering chef named Kumakichi who goes from place to place within Japan. It is set in Shonan and the heroine’s grandmother occupies the position of the Blessed One. By watching the movie, you can gain an understanding of what The Blessed One is.

In a scene near the beginning of the movie, Kumakichi goes to the shopping district where he finds a small office-like building. Inside, he discovers a wall full of rows of short slips of paper with words written on them in cursive.

“Hey, whaddya know, this shopping district’s still got a Blessed One, eh? Ain’t see that much anymore.”, Kumakichi says.

The paper slips on the wall are what they call Blessed Fudas, each recording an offering given to the Blessed One. Although Kumakichi gazes at the Blessed Fudas, he cannot read cursive. That is when the heroine makes her appearance giving Kumakichi a basic explanation of how to read cursive.

The next day, Kumakichi comes across the Blessed One herself.

“I’ve never seen you before. You aren’t from around here”, says the Blessed One, “If you’re stayin’ a while, do give an offering. I’ve just been craving some strawberries to eat. I’m the Blessed One.”

“Some attitude you ‘ave there fer a Blessed One”, says Kumakichi in shock.

Nevertheless, he buys strawberries and offers them to the Blessed One. She takes half and leaves the rest to Kumakichi. The Blessed One makes a face as if she is doing a great charity. As if she were saying, “Don’t be shy, accept the gift.” Kumakichi is once again surprised and leaves to go home.

Later, Kumakichi goes to see his Blessed Fuda and bumps into the heroine again.

She praises him, “Kumakichi-san, you have such a generous heart. Truly, you’ll be rewarded in blessings.”

And so, seeds of love are planted in Kumakichi’s heart.

Some days after, Kumakichi spots the Blessed One at a hamburger store near the shopping district.

“Hey, you hag! What kinda Blessed One uses money?!’, says Kumakichi angrily.

The Blessed One feigns ignorance and replies, “Hm? You must have the wrong person.”

Kumakichi, flabbergasted and too angry to speak,  curses once the Blessed One departs, ”That hag’s nuttin’ but a fraud. Guess ‘er blessings weren’t worth shit.”

The movie goes on with Kumakichi running around trying to solve the domestic troubles of the heroine and the Blessed One. Anyway, the Blessed One that appears in this movie is what people typically imagine a Blessed One to be.

An old woman in a small office-like shrine placed within a shopping district. She goes around asking the visitors of the shopping district to give offerings, writes the offerings onto small paper slips (Blessed Fudas), and sticks them on the wall. Furthermore, a Blessed One must never come into contact with money. That is why all offerings must be in the form of items.

I basically had that exact image of Blessed Ones and never thought that hard about it. However, when you start to question things like “What is the Blessed One’s blessings?” or “Who sponsors the Blessed One’s shrine?”, you invite even more questions.

According to the flyer, blessings affect Lord Enma’s weighing process. It says right here that one Blessed Fuda is equal to the weight of one straw which will be added to the weight of your good deeds. Really though, just one straw? That’s hardly anything. Well, the stinginess of it all does make it feel more realistic.

As for the shrine, well, let me announce my deduction. From what I’ve put together, the company that’s distributing this flyer is the same that’s sponsoring the Blessed One’s, Etou Mana’s, shrine. So I gave the flyer a good check again and saw the address for the huge shopping centre near my home. It was a COMS Hakusan flyer.

That makes sense. A shopping centre is more or less a shopping district. Now that I think about it, COMS Hakusan has several empty tenant spaces here and there. Maybe they thought this would be a good use of them instead of just leaving them empty.

Using the empty tenant spaces is fine and all, but a Blessed One? Okay, I see, I see. Hmm…

Long ago, it apparently wasn’t too rare for shopping districts to have Blessed Ones but they stopped existing more than a decade ago. Even in a movie from 1971, there’s a line like “Ain’t see that much anymore” so there’s hardly anyone who can reminisce about Blessed Ones now barring the elderly.

“Interesting, eh?”

My dad had just come back from shopping and was holding out that flyer to me.

“Have you ever seen a Blessed One in real life?”

“I’m not that old.”

Dad put away his coat and the groceries in the closet and refrigerator respectively. Judging by those ingredients, tonight’s dinner will be hot pot.

“Bet it’ll be cool to see her.”

“What are you on about? She’s no Blessed One. She’s just some girl they’re using to advertise”

Even though he just said it was interesting, he immediately turned cynical without a moment’s notice. That’s my dad for you.

Dad took off his knitted cap and used a hairdryer on his balding head. My dad insists that the heat from the hairdryer helps increase blood flow in the head slowing the balding process.

“Hey, weren’t Blessed Ones supposed to be old ladies?”

Etou Mana.

She’s short. Probably about 150cm. Her hair: long, brown,  wavy and curly. In the photo, her lips were bare; her smile, aloof and raw. It was as if she were a wild animal. That was definitely not the smile of some girl fit for sitting and looking pretty.

I wonder how old she is. She looks the same age as me.

“Even ignoring that, did you know that a Blessed One must never come into contact with money? It’s ridiculous. Nobody could live comfortably like that. That’s why I’m saying it’s fake. She’s just faking it. Just playing pretend as a Blessed One.”

But the Blessed One that appeared in “The Wandering Knife” secretly used money and that’s supposed to be a realistic portrayal. How can you know what a “true” Blessed One is like anyway?

Not that I’ll say that to Dad.

“What else?”

“Look at this card attached to the flyer. You’re supposed to write your name and stuff on it and show it when you get a Blessed Fuda written for you.”

“Yeah right. They’re trying to say this girl can write in cursive?” Dad snorted, obviously thinking it impossible.

“Maybe she uses a laptop and prints them using a portable printer”, Dad continued excitedly despite just mocking her.

That’s when I understood what Dad was so excited by. He was looking forward to how much she’d betray his expectations. Dad’s quite the contrarian.

I looked at the flyer again, staring intently at the photo.

Etou Mana. E-to-u Ma-na. Yeah, it really is quite the name. I repeated her name, trying to convince myself. As I did, my eyes wandered not to her name but to that animalistic smile of hers. I couldn’t look away.

I was drawn to her. Though at first, I was unable to grasp the fact. That was the start.

＊

In COMS Hakusan, there were life-sized signboards of Etou Mana all around. They used the same photo and the same catchphrase that was in the flyer. Those signboards all had a countdown saying “X more days”.

Some locations the signboards were placed at were the entrance, near the elevator, the middle of the food court, the walls of the shrine’s tenant space (currently under construction) and so on. The reason they felt like they were everywhere to me was because she was on my mind so much. Most people would get used to those signboards soon enough, forgetting their existence.

The end of winter break came and the number in “X more days” became 0. And so, the signboards were all replaced with new ones saying “I am the Blessed One”.

The photos on the new signboards showed a sideview photo of Mana using a fude pen to write a Blessed Fuda, with neither a smile nor a glance to the camera. Seeing her like that, I realised how beautiful she was for the first time. I chalked it up to her being the pretty-ambassador type.

Also, the fact that they used a photo of her writing for the signboards must mean that Mana herself would be writing the Blessed Fudas. In cursive, too. Dad said that she’d probably use a laptop and print the writing but that wasn’t true at all.

Cursive. The heroine of “The Wandering Knife” explained that the pawns in shogi that seemingly had the hiragana character “to” written on the back were actually the kanji character meaning “now”. Furthermore, that character was actually a substitute for the kanji character meaning “money”. After hearing this explanation, Kumakichi was humbled by the depth of her knowledge. Even I felt humbled hearing that. “To” becoming “now” and then becoming “money”? It’s as hard as English!

Not only is she pretty, she can write in cursive too, huh?  That’s amazing considering she might be younger than me.

I was thoroughly humbled by Etou Mana and became scared of the thought of meeting her. Why, in front of her I might as well be rubbish! Today I’ll just stick to looking from afar.

When I went to the shrine’s tenant space, the walls walling off the construction site had already been taken down leaving rows of notice boards for Blessed Fudas to be plastered on. Both the board and the poles of the notice boards were made with plain wood, and tiled roofs provided cover for the notice boards. The notice boards surrounded the tenant space on the outer side while the inside had benches.

Alright then, Etou Mana is… not here. In the centre of the shrine was a familiar signboard that had a wooden fuda on it with the words “Going around the shops”.

Even without the Blessed One, the shrine was in a festive mood. People of all ages were standing in front of the notice boards looking at the Blessed Fudas. Just as I was doing right then.

It’s only the first day and yet the notice boards had already about a hundred slips of Blessed Fuda on it. They were all written on in standard writing which let me read them. The contents ranged from fridges to stockings and all kinds of items needed for a person’s daily life. Many of the items on the Blessed Fudas not only had their names but printed coloured pictures as well.

While I was gazing at them, I got a sense of what direction COMS Hakusan were going for. It had something to do with the pictures of products and the donors. If the donors were tenants of COMS Hakusan then the Blessed Fudas would have pictures of their products they offered to the Blessed One. All the Blessed Fudas without pictures had simply “The Association” credited as the donor.

The Association? What? As puzzled as I was, I soon noticed an explanation written on a pole. ”The Blessed Association. That is the group that supports the Blessed One. The Blessed Fudas that have the donor credited to ‘The Association’ are offerings by the Blessed Association”. Below that explanation was a member list of the Blessed Association of COMS Hakusan. Approximately a quarter of the tenants of COMS Hakusan were listed one after the other.

I compared the list and the Blessed Fudas. All the donors who used their names were members of the Blessed Association. It seems only the products that weren’t sold by any of the member’s stores were bought as a group and thus credited as “The Association”.

The tenants are all businesses first and foremost so their aim must be the potential profits from the extra publicity rather than “blessings”. That said, it was quite the system. In the exchange to Blessed Fudas, a fridge and a ballpoint pen were both the same value: just one slip. These two items were so unlike each other in their cash value and yet the Blessed Fudas that were exchanged for them were the same not just in number but even in size. I wonder why the sponsors agreed to this.

Even despite all that, there’s a hundred slips of papers here.

Chopsticks, body soap, shoes, underwear, a hairdryer, a desk, a vacuum cleaner, a rubbish bin, detergent, a fluorescent lamp, a kettle, bed sheets, an iron, cellophane tape, a bag, a spatula, a nail clipper etc. Who would’ve thought a person needed this much just to live? I looked at around twenty fudas thinking they made sense, but I was just bored by the ones after. When I was halfway through all the fudas, I felt absolutely tired of looking and gave up.

Well, anyway, let me announce my deduction. From what I’ve put together, the fact that among the offerings written on the Blessed Fudas there are things like a fridge, a hairdryer and a vacuum cleaner point to Etou Mana living alone. In fact, I’d go further and say she only started living alone once it was decided that she would be the Blessed One.

Wait a sec, now that I think about it the Blessed One in “The Wandering Knife” lived alone too despite her granddaughter (the heroine) living in the same neighbourhood. Maybe living alone is part of being a Blessed One.

After looking at all those Blessed Fudas, I felt like I had my fill. Guess I’ll leave meeting the Blessed One for later and go do some shopping before I go home.

Done thinking, I had reached the bookstore when—