Kusaka Matsuri. Each October the people of Kusaka gather at Ōmura Shrine and celebrate the founding of our town. That doesn’t sound so awesome, but believe me, it is.
On the night of Kusaka Matsuri there are food booths and games and festival performers. My parents even leave the shiitake farm—if you can imagine that. Haru and I race through the crowds, pushing our way past the booths and the hundreds of people. Maybe someone sells Haru a cup of sake and we take turns sipping at it until the lights turn fuzzy. That’s never happened, but what if it did? Anything is possible at Kusaka Matsuri. Everybody gets into it. Everyone has a good time.
This year might have been different, though. Ichiro’s funeral was held just a week before the festival. His body was cremated six days before. There was talk of canceling the matsuri altogether, but in the end the town went through with it. The decorations and the booths had already been built. The toys and food and fireworks already purchased. The performers had been rehearsing for months.
Some people said they wouldn’t go. They couldn’t dance and drink and toast Kusaka Town after two kids walked into our high school and killed themselves. “This isn’t a time to celebrate,” they said. “It would be a shame to the memory of the students.”
“The unfortunate deaths of Aiko and Ichiro are a struggle for us all,” the mayor of Kusaka said in response. “But that is precisely why we must continue with Kusaka Matsuri.”
The mayor of Kusaka Town was a small man with a bald head. His suit always looked like it had swallowed him whole and was hungry for more. But if you heard the mayor speak without seeing him, you’d never know he looked like that. I guess that’s why he’d been elected in the first place.
“There is something great about this town,” he continued. “We have lived and thrived in this valley for more than two centuries. We have met disaster after disaster, and our people have overcome it all. Mudslides and earthquakes and floods have tested us, but we have always isshō ni ganbarimashita. We have never given up.
“The tragedies of Aiko and Ichiro tell me that something terrible has happened to us. We have become forgetful and lazy. We have ignored the signs that our children are hurting. The solution isn’t to hide in our houses with the doors and windows locked. No, we have to show our children that life is good. That Kusaka is an amazing place to live and work and go to school. We have to celebrate who we are, not hide from it. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, bring your children. Dress them in their yukata and geta sandals. Take them to the booths and the lights and the games. Bring smiles to their faces. Show them why we have stayed in this valley for two hundred years.”
Now, some might say that the mayor didn’t want to lose the money he’d already put into the festival, but I don’t think that was it. I think he believed the festival would save us. At least a little bit.
* * *
“What did you say?” My mother stood in the kitchen, spooning hot bowls of shiitake soup.
“Do you think dreams mean something?” I asked again, kneeling down to the table in the front room. “You know, in real life.”
“One more time,” she said louder.
“The boy asked if you believe in fortune-telling!” my father shouted across the table and into the kitchen.
My mother was frowning when she walked in.
“That’s not what I said.”
My father ignored me and blew his nose into a handkerchief. My mother rattled a bowl of soup down in front of me. My parents are so old! Not normal old either. Really, really old. My mother had me when she was fifty. “It’s a miracle,” the doctors had said.
“Yes … a miracle,” my father had replied, rubbing his face and leaving the room.
So fifteen years later my sixty-five-year-old mother tried to steady her hands and not spill mushroom soup on our low dining table. She grinned and asked if I’d been seeing ghosts.
“What? Ghosts? No,” I said. “Do you guys listen to anything I say?”
“It would be nice to see my sister again,” she said to herself.
My father shoved his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Yes, Koda, give all the family our regards if you happen to see them wandering through the halls.”
“Will Haru be attending the festival?” my mother asked, setting chopsticks next to my bowl.
“We go together every year. He should be there. As long as his uncle isn’t trying to punish him.”
“Perhaps it would help Haru to have more fun in his life. You could invite him to spend more time on our farm. I think he would like that.”
“Um, no, he would not like that.”
“Why not?” my father asked. “You like being a shiitake farmer.”
“I do not. Not even a little bit!”
“Every boy wants to be a shiitake farmer,” my father said.
“Why would anyone want to be a shiitake farmer?”
My mother pushed up from the table and shuffled toward the kitchen.
“You’re in the dirt,” my father continued. “With mushrooms. All boys like dirt. And mushrooms.”
“What boys like mushrooms? Boys like TV games and anime and, I don’t know, ice cream. Nobody likes mushrooms. Mushrooms don’t even like mushrooms.”
“Well, you should eat them more often, then,” my mother said, returning from the kitchen with a plate of steamed shiitake buns. “The more you eat something, the more delicious it becomes.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” I said.
“What do you want to be, then?” my father asked.
I stared into my stupid mushroom soup bowl. “You know what I want to be.”
“Oh, a pilot. Mother, get JAL on the phone and ask them if they need someone to fall asleep and crash a plane into Mount Fuji.”
“Stop it,” my mother whispered.
“You’re a shiitake farmer, Koda. You come from a long line of honorable shiitake farmers. The sooner you accept this, the easier your life will be.”
“That’s enough,” my mother said.
“Honorable shiitake farmer,” I said under my breath. “What would a dishonorable shiitake farmer be?”
“One who goes around with his head in the clouds,” my father shot back. He turned to my mother. “That’s the reason he has the problems he does.”
“Urusai!” My mother almost never raises her voice. So when she does, we all know to keep our mouths shut. “This is supposed to be a happy night, both of you. Please, don’t ruin this.”
My father wiped his face and we finished our soup in silence.