Saturday, November 21, 2015
Hidemi’s Rambling No.556
As the house where I grew up was being sold, I came home in Kyoto for
the last time fearfully. My parents had been constantly sullen from
anxiety about money and their future since I left home. Now that they
gave up their house and our ancestor’s last land, I had wondered how
gloomy they were. On the contrary, I was surprised that they were
utterly in a good mood. They seemed at ease as if a great weight had
been lifted from their shoulders. I hadn’t seen them like this for a
long time. The main purpose of my visit was sorting out my stuff. To get
some keepsakes and mementos of my childhood, I entered my room for the
first time in decades. It had become my younger sister’s room, who now
lived abroad. Some of my old stuff was kept in the mud-walled warehouse
that had stood next to the house for several hundred years. This ancient
two-story warehouse that my ancestors used generation after generation
is also going to be torn down along with the house. The last time I got
in there was probably with my late grandfather when I was a child. So
this was the first time I got in as a grown-up, and also the last. I
found my first stuffed animal downstairs there and was about to get out
with it when my father told me to go upstairs with him. I climbed the
steep wooden ladder to the second floor that was more like an attic. It
had a small skylight on the plaster wall and tons of dust all around. On
the wooden shelves along the wall were an antique balance and bronze
weights that used to belong exclusively to a landowner during the
Japanese feudal times. There were also numerous coated plates, bowls and
trays with legs that my ancestors used for banquets. On the entire
floor were Japanese traditional huge oblong treasure chests called
‘Nagamochi’ that size was about two coffins. They had sit there keeping
my ancestors’ valuables all through the times of wars and my family’s
decline. My father once saw many swords inside one of them and wanted to
show them to me. I was keyed up about unveiling what my ancestors had
inherited for so many generations. We opened dust-covered chests one by
one, but every chest contained the same thing – futon. So many old musty
futons appeared from chest after chest. They must have been expensive
in the old days and my ancestors stored them for the house guests.
Everything in the warehouse told how prosperous our family used to be
and how low we have gotten now. It was funny though, that what our
family had inherited and preserved to pass on to the next generation for
years were mostly futons. I had quarreled with my parents over
succeeding the family all these years and had been on bad terms with
them for that because I had refused. Many ancestors of mine gave in to
unwanted marriages or sacrificed their lives to succeed the family. We
all suffered from the family succession and everything was for futon! I
wanted to tell my ancestors that futons of good quality were widely
available at incredibly low prices in the discount stores nowadays.
Succeeding the family turned out to be preserving what became worthless
today. That was ridiculous enough for me to make my anger pass into
laughter. At the very back of the warehouse was one chest that hasn’t
been opened for who knows how many years. It was practically impossible
to open it as other big chests were stacked up over it. Nobody had an
idea what was inside. I strongly hoped that wasn’t futon although it was
quite likely…
Labels:
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Childhood,
Family,
futon,
generation,
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Japan,
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parents,
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sword,
treasure chest,
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