Friday, August 1, 2014
Hidemi’s Rambling No.522
The oldest episode of my ancestors that I heard from my grandfather is
about my great-great-grandfather and I hereby write it down for the
record. According to my grandfather, his grandfather was quite a
prodigal. He didn’t work and just squandered the family money. Our
family was a powerful landowner when he inherited the family fortune and
became a master of the family. They had lived in the same house I grew
up and all the land stretched as far as the eye could see from it was
his land back then. He had a lot of tenant farmers that worked for him
in his land. Many servants lived on the family premises and also quite a
few relatives of the family lived in the house. My grandfather once
showed me his old photographs in which our distant relatives were taken
together. I asked if they were group photos of some important events,
and he told me that they all lived together in this very house. Our
house was over 100 years old and the remnants of my
great-great-grandfather’s prime were here and there. The old kitchen
remained on the earth floor with one big and six or seven small clay
ovens. We didn’t use them any more but I always wondered how much
cooking was needed for how many people when that ovens were used. Across
the front yard from the house was a gate building in which had a small
room. It was my first own room when I entered elementary school, but it
used to be one of the quarters for the servants. Beside the gate, an old
wooden container with carriage poles was parked on the wall. In old
days, it was used as a fire extinguisher that people carried water in
the container with the poles on their shoulders. Only a powerful family
had it for the entire hamlet. Our old local name that had been used in
place of our family’s last name was written on the side of the
container, telling how big our family used to be. On a hot summer day,
my great-great-grandfather made his servants take him to the river that
runs through the busy district just to make them fan for him and cool
himself down. All year round, he visited a place where geishas served
him and had a party. He was a lavish spender and the family fortune
dwindled away. In stead of working, he sold his ancestral land piece by
piece for his extravagance. As his land had been passed to his tenant
farmers and the number of his servants had shrunk fast, he kept
partying. By the time he died, only the house and a few tiny pieces of
nearby land had remained. No one knows why he lived that way, but he
drank up the family fortune. I imagine he must have had painful parties
and have drunk terrible sake every time…