Hentaigana: The Flower of Edo

[imaginarystories]

火事と喧嘩は江戸の華

Fires and fights are the flowers of Edo.

 

In the Shōgun's city of Edo, Momori approached the master of Himyaku.

"Hey, Publisher-san." Momori held a roll of papers out to Yoshiki, shaking it under his face. "Give me some fucking money."

The publisher of Himyaku, Yoshi, looked down on Momori from his shop's open sales floor. The more he looked the higher his eyebrows rose. His gaze touched Momori's black eye, then moved up to her charcoal-dusted eyebrows, on to the pale birthmark peeking out from below her headwrap, then finally to the wrap itself. Momori figured he was looking to see if her unnatural white forelock showed through the thinned cloth.

"What happened to you?" Asked Yoshi as his eyebrows climbed towards his freshly shaved hairline.

Momori shrugged, trying to look casual. Her empty stomach spoiled her best unconcerned look by rumbling loudly. "War. The lockdown. I was nearly arrested this morning."

"You didn't get that black eye this morning." Today was one of those days where Yoshi felt like being a pain in the ass, apparently.

"Yeah, this is from the first time I was nearly arrested." Momori shook her roll of papers again. "Just before the lockdown. One of the Shōgun's court guards came by to ask me a few questions. Mostly about that poem you paid me for."

 

Yoshi shuddered and looked around the street. There were four other small publishers on this section of Anjin Street, all selling a similar mix of cheap humour, scandal and crime sheets, and pornography. The smaller shops were all more or less identical, with porches and awnings that could be swung closed at night for safety or open in the day for display. It was nearly the second hour of the morning and only Yoshi's Himyaku House was ready for business, with its front open and all its wares on display. The other publishers were just starting to open.

Standing on the street below the open sales room, Momori watched as the owners and employees of the others worked at opening their awnings and platforms. They were late, but they hadn't lost any business. There was no activity from the biggest publisher, right next door to Yoshi's Himyaku House. Across the street the local shops were still closed. Even the usual peddlers of cheap papers were gone.

Himyaku, Scarlet Thread, was the second largest of the shops on this part of Anjin. Yoshiki, his son Ishiki, and two employees used the upper level for storage. The ground floor had barely enough room for the display and their back workroom. At night they packed their printing equipment and tools in boxes and slept on top of the boxes to protect them from thieves.

At night Momori slept in a three-tatami rowhouse where her neighbours would trash her work tools if she didn't carry them with her.

Anjin Street had fallen a long way since the days when a useful barbarian had been allowed to call himself a samurai. Now the shop banners were faded and the wooden awnings crooked, and the boardwalks in front of the shops were starting to warp. This end of Anjin Street was better than the slumping buildings further down the way, but its best days were far gone.

Of the four publishers here, Himyaku House had been graced with slightly more visits from the police. Partly due to Yoshiki's political opinions, but mostly due to his refusal to pay any larger bribe than he strictly had to. All the publishers stayed in business by avoiding official attention. An agent from the Shōgun's court guard asking questions about one was a disaster for the whole block.

Yoshi's gaze darted back and forth between Momori's black eye and his neighbours. "The court guard hasn't been around here. No cops or spies, either."

"It was just before the west side of the city fell. And then we were all locked down." A painful series of stomach-rumbles reminded Momori of why she was there. She shook the roll of papers again. "I've been writing all through the lockdown. Fucking pay me."

"That explains why I didn't get a visit." Still looking up and down the block at his neighbours, Yoshi took the sheets from Momori's gloved hand. He barely glanced at her work before looking back at Momori. She swayed a bit as Yoshi stared at her. "Why were you nearly arrested this morning?"

Ishiki, Yoshi's only child, came out from the back of the shop carrying another handful of papers. Someone had cut his hair during lockdown, trimming the boyish forelock down to a simple tuft. Standing below the shop floor, Momori stood on her toes and stretched to rub the top of the boy's shaved scalp. He ducked away from her hand.

"What a fancy haircut," she teased Ishi. "Almost grown-up. Are you trying to impress someone's pretty daughter?"

"Shut up," Ishi muttered, blushing. Momori figured she'd struck gold.

"He's supposed to be helping Shun," said Yoshi, putting his hand briefly on Ishi's shoulder. "Not standing out here gossiping."

Trying to look as stern as his father, an attempt ruined by his round cheeks, Ishi took three papers from his stack and offered them to Momori. Taking them, Momori flipped through them quickly. Copies of her poem, written in angular simple katakana. Nothing impressive, but Yoshi and Ishi wouldn't show her this if it wasn't important. Taking a closer look, Momori read again, flipping back and forth to look between a line in the middle of the piece: Those who stand in service grow fat on the master's rice.

"The characters look weird. Is this stenciled? It must have taken forever to cut."

Yoshi nodded. "The boy has been daydreaming again. I took him out to Sakuma-sensei's library and he started getting bright ideas instead of paying attention to his studies."

Nodding like his father, Ishi grinned. "I saw the taippu-raitta, a character-writing machine. It's Western machine for stamping characters onto a sheet of paper. A servant demonstrated it. It's really fast!"

Momori looked again at the papers. "These aren't stamped."

"No," Ishi spoke quickly. "But the machine has a roller for pushing the paper along. So really it's two machines, one does the stamping and one rolls paper. I thought if we could wrap a stencil around an inked roller, then we could roll out written sheets quickly. And if we make a stamping machine, a separate one like the character-writer but sharp, we can cut the sheets quickly."

Quiet for a moment, Momori tried to picture the idea. The roller seemed simple, although how would you keep it inked evenly? But a stamping machine for cutting stencil characters? "That's actually clever. How'd you come up with that?"

Either ignoring or not noticing Momori's barb, Ishi spoke quickly again. "I was reading about silk printing before we went to Sakuma-sensei's library. Then I saw the character-writer and how it stamped onto a sheet, and I thought the roller and stamping machines might be useful for printing silk. Then I realized paper would be easier."

Yoshi huffed, and tried to scowl. Looking at Momori he said, "Don't give the boy a big head. It's a clever idea, but it's not practical right now. If he wants to make these ideas of his work, he needs to pay more attention to his studies. That's why I took him to Sakuma-sensei's, so he can see how much he has to learn."

Yoshi spoiled his attempt to be stern by giving Ishi a pat on the head. Ishi squirmed a bit under the pat, then bowed slightly to thank his father. Taking his hand away, Yoshi attempted to rearrange his expression into a serious look. "It's a good idea. It needs some thought, but it's a good idea."

Looking between father and son, Momori thought they both looked equally pleased and embarrassed by the head-pat. The boy was only in his thirteenth year but more serious than most children his age. In a few years it would be time for him to be formally trained as his father's replacement or sent out for apprenticeship. And Ishi seemed more interested in devices than publishing. He was already distracted from the conversation, running his thumb over the characters on his sheets and frowning at the smudge.

"As for you," Yoshi scowled back at Momori. "Stop trying to change the subject. What happened with the cops this morning?"

Momori tried to shrug it off again. "There was a patrol at Miyuki Street, cops and army. They stopped everyone trying to cross, asked us all our business. A man who lives by my block recognized me. He ratted me out for writing porn. You know, the stuff you pay me to write."

"Did you..."

"I didn't have to rat on you. They went through my bindle, saw some of your pamphlets and scandal sheets. That essay, The Death of Dignity." Momori pulled her bindle tighter against herself. The heavily-patched carrying cloth held her sketching tools, a bamboo tablet, a small knife, and other odds and ends. None of which the patrol had bothered to confiscate, fortunately.

A slow rattling sigh escaped Yoshi. "Damn. I'm too broke to pay anyone off right now."

Yoshi complaining about money was a good sign. Things were only bad when he stopped. Momori ignored his grumbling. "The good news is they arrested the snitch."

Ishi looked up from his papers. "What for?"

"Being stupid enough to try to sneak past a patrol with three boxes full of loot. Mainly netsuke, some other small stuff. If your father gives me some money and I'll write it up for a crime sheet. It was dramatic, they roughed him up in the street. I'll make it about a pretty woman falsely accused by a criminal and rescued by brilliant police work, that ought to sell a few copies and keep the authorities happy."

She had both Ishi and Yoshi's attention. Now was probably a good time to drop this piece of news... "And I can throw in a sheet about those cops who got shot last night."

Yoshi's eyebrows shot straight up like fireworks while Ishi's eyes went wide. "What?!"

"Right outside my neighbourhood gate. Three patrol assistants. I saw the bodies this morning." Mormori worked the hook in a little deeper.

"Shot with firearms, not arrows. I got up in the middle of the night to use the latrine and heard fighting, so I looked over the gate." Three thunderous booms. Momori had heard enough these past few weeks to learn the difference between Japanese firearms and the imported American or British models. Those roars had to have been the new American slug guns.

"It wasn't very bright last night. Did they have lanterns?"

She really hadn't seen anything useful. Flashes of smoke-dimmed light under a three-quarters moon, lanterns shaking in unsteady hands or already thrown to the ground. "Yeah, but I still couldn't see that much. I heard lots though, and saw the bodies this morning before the unpersons hauled them away. I can make up the details."

"Do both stories by tomorrow." Yoshi's eyebrows still hovered around the middle of his forehead, as though unsure if it were safe to come down yet. He rattled the papers Momori had given him earlier. "What's all this?"

"Three poems. All the same genre as the one that got me this," Momori touched her eye. "Two erotic pieces, two gossip pieces from my neighbourhood, and a joke piece about a drunk mistaking the neighbourhood shrine for a urinal."

"One shu," Yoshi replied, sticking the papers away inside his kosode.

The back of Momori's neck prickled and she opened her mouth to argue. Before she could say anything Yoshi went on. "Plus a hundred pennies for the Miyuki Avenue story and a hundred and fifty pennies for the shooting."

"All right," Momori said. The hackles on her neck started to settle. One shu for eight pieces of more-of-the-same, plus another shu for two pieces that would sell more copies. That was about what she'd hoped for. Momori knew her writing was passable, but Himyaku printed illustrated sheets and her art was mediocre on a good day. There were too many other passable writers in Edo and no shortage of mediocre artists anywhere, so Momori made pennies by selling to disreputable publishers like Himyaku or his neighbours.

As much as a nosy pain in the ass as Yoshi could be sometimes, he was the most reliable of the publishers Momori freelanced for. Or at least he had been, before he'd started getting politcal ideas.

Although if she'd really wanted to stay away from politics, Momori probably shouldn't have pressured Yoshi into paying her for political works. Oh well. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.