Come, land on my hand,
Little bird, and sing to me of
Wonders you have seen
Gen paused, and I guessed he was choosing his words carefully.
“This room is the heart of Kono-san’s business.”
Already, I was shaking my head. How could that be so? The room was deathly quiet, unlike the hustle and bustle of the floor below us. Was Gen trying to make his role here far more important than it truly was? I smiled indulgently.
“I think you are exaggerating, Gen. This place is…” I tailed off, suddenly aware that I had no real idea of what it was. Gen jumped in eagerly.
“It is the archive. Every transaction that takes place, no matter how small or large, is here. Look.” He removed one of the fatter ledgers with almost reverential care and allowed it to fall open at a random page. I saw three columns of kanji, with an empty column suggesting that something might need to be added later. But it all meant nothing at all to me, so I shrugged in irritation.
“So? What does it say?”
Gen colored, obviously comprehending his mistake. “I am in error, Mi-san. Please, allow me to explain. This first column is the name of the client. The other columns are the sums of money borrowed and the dates they were repaid. The empty column is there to record the very rare times that money is not repaid on time.”
Money borrowed and repaid? My confusion deepened and I looked at Gen helplessly, wordlessly waiting for him to explain. His expression was equally puzzled for a moment, and then I was sure I saw a glint of laughter in his eyes. Perhaps I was wrong as he spoke quickly and courteously.
“These are your father’s account books. Kono-san is the most successful and important moneylender in the whole of Edo.”
I thought about that and found myself vaguely disappointed. Moneylending had none of the allure of what I thought of as business. Real things. Thing that could be bought and sold. Jade and silk and pearls. Nice things. But moneylending? Where was the joy in that?
“And that is good?” I asked dubiously.
“Anything to do with money is good,” Gen answered firmly. “There are many moneylenders in Edo. But Kono-san is the most successful by far.”
I shrugged, still not convinced, and Gen’s expression was suddenly sharp. When he spoke, his voice was so harsh I almost jerked back from him.
“You do not understand the value of money, Mi-san,” he grated. “I am the only child of a poor widow. Mother is not a strong woman. She manages to do laundry for those of our neighbors who are better off than we are, but it does not pay a great deal. If I do not work, then Mother would not be able to pay the rent on our little house. If I did not work, we would have no food. Have you ever known what it is to be hungry, Mi-san?”
“No,” I said cautiously. “I have never been hungry. But I can’t help that.”
“No, of course not.” Gen was smiling again as though his outburst had never happened. “Please, forgive my unconsidered words. You are not interested in the life of a mere messenger boy. I should have explained that it is because Kono-san lends money to people that you do not go hungry.” He paused and spoke slowly, as if to a child.
“He does not do it out of the goodness of his heart. When he lends money, he expects to get it back at the end of the agreed term, together with a little extra because he has not had use of that money himself. If he lends somebody a lot of money, then he will get a lot extra back. That is why he is a wealthy man.
“That is how business works, Mi-san. And that is why your father is one of the wealthiest and most honored businessmen in the whole of Edo. And because of that, I am proud to work for him.”
I heard what Gen said, but there was so much to take in that my head was spinning. I would think about it all later, very carefully. At the moment, I was humbled to discover that a mere messenger boy such as Gen could be so very wise in the ways of the business world while I knew nothing.
I took the ledger from his hands and flicked the pages. Although the kanji meant nothing to me, I sensed the power in these pages. These were where my lovely clothes came from. These were what enabled Mother to buy her expensive gaijin furniture. These were what allowed my ungrateful brothers to bet on sumo bouts as often as they wished.
These books were money.
And I could understand nothing that they said.
Suddenly, I was hungry. I had hoped to learn to read and write so I could please Father. Now, I understood that my initial thoughts had been only the first inkling of something much greater. These books were both the past and the future. Anybody who could read them could chart Father’s business from lowly beginnings to great wealth and beyond. I wanted—wanted more than anything I could recollect—to be able to understand what they contained.
To be part of it.
I would learn, just as I would learn to read and write. I had mastered the abacus easily enough, and if all the clerks in Father’s business could read and write, it couldn’t be so very difficult.
I glanced at Gen. He was staring longingly at a heap of loose papers on the shelf nearest the shoji. I recognized them at once, the slips of paper the clerks passed to Gen and the other messengers. I pushed aside the sweeping thoughts that were whirling in my mind.
“Gen.” He was startled by my voice and jumped and turned to me reluctantly. “Those are the slips of paper that the clerks complete. What do they say? Why are they here?”
He lifted his head. I could see he was pleased by my question. “I, and all the other messengers, bring them up here each day. Each slip is a record of a transaction. They either record an amount of money loaned, or an amount repaid, or—very rarely—money that is overdue for payment. At the end of each day, I enter the information they contain in one of the ledgers. At the end of each month, Tanaka-san looks at the ledger entries for the previous month and…”
He paused, and I guessed he was trying to explain what Tanaka did in terms I would understand. I nodded encouragingly. “Tanaka-san balances the figures. He adds up how much has been loaned and how much has been repaid. That—less a little for loans that should have been repaid but have not—is the profit Kono-san has made for the month.”
That was easy enough to understand. I was delighted by my grasp of the complex world of my father’s business.
“You have a very responsible job,” I said, and I meant it. Gen beamed at my words.
“I am honored to work for Kono-san.”
I nodded, but suddenly I was tired of all this talk. I wanted to learn to read and write. Not tomorrow or the next day—now. I wanted—no, I needed—to be able to comprehend the hidden world that lay inside these closed books. These books that represented everything Father had achieved. If they were important to him, then they were important to me.
“That is all most interesting, Gen. But you were released from your duties to teach me to read and write. Can we begin now, please?
A slow grin spread over his face. “We will begin today, certainly. But reading and writing are very difficult things, Mi-san. It will take much longer than a single day for you to learn anything at all.”
I glared at him. He was wrong, of course. I was my father’s daughter, and I would achieve anything I set my mind to. If a mere messenger could master the art of reading and writing, how could it present a challenge to me?
A short while later, I understood that it was I who had been wrong.