in Shizuoka, but because I didn’t get along with my stepmother I was
sent to live with relatives in Yumiura. I was eager to find some way to
rebel, and so as soon as I arrived I went to work for the newspaper. I was
called back and married off when my parents found out, so I was only in
Yumiura for about seven months.”
“And your husband is ...”
“He’s a priest at a Shinto shrine in Numazu.”
This was not the sort of profession Kozumi had been expecting, so he
glanced up at the woman’s face. The word is outdated and may end up
giving the reader an unfavorable impression of the woman’s hairstyle, but
her hair was arranged in a pretty “Fuji style” cut. Kozumi’s eyes were
drawn to it.
“We used to be able to live fairly well considering that he’s a priest, but
after the war things got tougher and tougher day by day until now—my son
and daughter still stand by me, but they find all sorts of ways to defy their
father.”
Kozumi sensed the disharmony of the woman’s family.
“The shrine at Numazu is so big it doesn’t even bear comparison with the
shrine at that festival in Yumiura—and of course the bigger they are the
harder it is to manage them. We’re having some problems just now because
my husband decided to sell ten cedar trees that grew behind the temple
without Consulting anyone. I’ve run away—come here to Tokyo.”
“Memories are something we should be grateful for, don’t you think?
No matter what circumstances people end up in they’re still able to
remember things from the past—I think it must be a blessing bestowed on
us by the gods. There were lots of children at the shrine on the road going
down through the town in Yumiura, so you suggested that we just keep
going without stopping in—but even so we could see there were two or
three flowers blooming on the small camellia over by the toilet—flowers
