You see,” the nervous little man began, “last year, when I went into town to pay my tax, while I was gone some bandit gang got into my storehouse and stole all the rest of the season’s brewing!”
Ran raised an elegant eyebrow. “Brewing?”
“That’s right. I make the finest sake in these parts.”
“Ohhh.” Her dark eyes lit with interest. Miao sighed. Ran-oneesan and her sake… “And your assistants? They’re all reliable?”
“I don’t have any assistants,” the little man replied. “I reported the crime, but the magistrate said that there hadn’t been any bandit activity around here, and he actually accused me of hiding the sake and filing a false report! Between you and me, the man’s an idiot who only got the post on account of a family connection.”
“Anyway, what do you want us to do?” Ran asked.
“Well, I’ll pay you 30 momme apiece if you guard my storehouse while I go into town to pay the tax. And if you should actually catch the bandits, I’ll make it a gold ryou apiece. Oh, and I’ll throw in a barrel of my best sake for your own use.”
Wow, thought Miao. Thirty momme for each of us… and a whole ryou if we catch the thieves! We won’t have to worry about eating for a while!
Ran’s eyes hardened. “I can’t forgive anyone who would steal sake,” she said. “We’ll take your offer, Touji-san, and catch the thieves for you!”
The storehouse was right where the brewer said it would be, standing on the hillside like the Treasure Ship of the Gods. True to his word, the brewer trundled out a keg of sake for their use before loading the tax-barrels onto his cart. Ran filled her flask and went to keep watch in the rear of the storehouse. Reasoning that the bandits – if they existed – wouldn’t strike in broad daylight, she stretched out on the grass to take a nap.
Miao sat out front and waited for the thieves to show up. And waited. And waited. And waited.
She practiced her Nekoketten kata. She played a skipping game that the girls of her village played, but it wasn’t much fun by herself. She was bored out of her mind.
The sun set. The moon rose, full and round, hanging in the sky like a big lantern. One by one, the stars came out. Fireflies danced like little stars. The only sound was the chirping of crickets.
There aren’t any bandits, Miao thought. There’s no sign of trouble and I’m bored. I may as well have some of the sake.
WOW! she said to herself. Miao-oneesan isn’t a drinking woman – not like Ran-oneesan – but that’s really good sake! She took another drink. The moon hung in the sky like a great lantern, and the stars and the fireflies were dancing to the music of the chirping crickets, and she took another drink.
She took yet another drink and sprawled on the grass, gazing up at the moon hanging like a great lantern in the sky and the dancing stars and fireflies, and she started singing.
Do not leave the silver cup idly glinting at the Moon,
the things that Heaven made Man was meant to use.
Roast mutton and sliced beef will only taste well
If you drink with them at one sitting three hundred cups...
To her ears, she sounded good enough to sing in the grand opera in Beijing. Behind the storehouse, Ran sipped her sake and wondered where Miao had gotten a cat and why she was torturing it. But it didn’t sound like a bandit attack, and she didn’t sense an attacker’s ki, so she shrugged and went back to trying to remember all of Tabito’s tanka on sake.
I don't know how to say it,
What to do about it –
The noblest of all,
It seems, is sake.
Now what was the next one?
Miao drank some more and savored the warmth that filled her. She felt like she was in love with everything that moved or lived or didn’t live, the trees and the mountains and the moon and the stars and fireflies and crickets and the grass and the breeze and the bear…
The bear?
Miao looked up, and up, and up at about 19 shaku of snuffling, red-eyed bear. Being full of love for everything that moved or lived or didn’t live – not to mention full of sake – she walked right up to the bear. It came down on all fours and peered at her through its small red eyes.
Miao’s eyes were redder than the bear’s. The bear cocked its head on one side in puzzlement, and began to sniff her up and down. Now it’s a well-known fact that animals can smell fear, and that was what the bear was sniffing for on Miao. But Miao, full of love and sake, was a fearless woman. The bear backed up a couple of steps, expecting an attack. But Miao didn’t attack either. The bear didn’t know what to think.
Miao beamed. “Kuma-san,” she smiled, “I love every hair on your twenty-seven-tsubo body. Now I know that you’ve got all your bear friends out there, Nitou-kuma and Santou-kuma and Yontou-kuma and Gotou-Kuma and Rokutou-kuma, and I want you to understand that I love every single one of them just like they were my own little brothers. I love them that much. But IF THEY BOTHER ME TONIGHT I’m gonna throw every last one of them off this hill with my Nekoketten!” She jumped forward in an attack stance.
The bear backed up, but didn’t run away.
“Kuma-san,” Miao said, “you know, when it comes down to it, we’re both just beasts.”
The bear peered at her.
“Come on, Kuma-san.” Miao took the bear by one shaggy paw. “You’re gonna be my buddy.” She led the bear over to the sake keg, and he started sniffing around it. “You like that, huh?” she asked. “You smell something good?” The bear lifted the sake keg and started drinking out of it, just as if it were the ama-cha that temples put out on hana matsuri.
The bear began to dance. Two sniffs, three snorts, a half-turn and a grunt, all over the hillside. Miao laughed and tried to dance with him. It was harder than it looked. Her feet got tangled up, and that made her start laughing and that got her feet tangled up worse, till she fell over and lay back on the grass, gazing up at the moon hanging in the sky like a big lantern, and all the stars and the fireflies dancing, until she fell asleep and dreamed of an endless line of bears dancing into the storehouse and out again, each one carrying a keg of sake.
“Miao! Miao!”
“Wha… go ‘way…”
“MIAO!”
“Hey, whaddya do that for!” Miao rubbed her stinging cheek. “You didn’t have to slap me, Oneesan!”
“You really did it this time, airhead. Look.”
The storehouse door stood wide open. The interior was empty.
Miao recoiled. “Whaaaaat? The bears took the sake?”
“Bears? What in the world are you talking about? You got drunk and passed out, and the bandits just danced in here and took all the kegs.” Ran scratched her head. “It’s funny, though, I never heard or sensed anything.”
“You probably went to sleep too,” Miao sniffed.
Ran made a rude noise. “Anyway, we’d better hurry up and track those bandits before Touji-san gets back. Otherwise he’ll think we stole his precious sake.”
“But Oneesan, there aren’t any tracks!” Miao wailed.
Ran held up a small green object. “There’s this.”
“Huh?” Miao peered at it. “It’s a leaf. So what?”
“Look closer.”
There was something drawn on the leaf. A twig or something had been used to scratch a crude picture of some kind of animal.
“That’s weird,” Miao said. “Back home we’ve got stories about how foxes draw pictures on leaves and change themselves into things to fool people. You think it was foxes stole the sake?”
Ran’s quick eye spotted that the grass was indeed trampled in the direction of the forest. “Looks like somebody wants us to think so. Here’s another leaf. This way.”
A faint trail of broken twigs, trampled brush, and the odd leaf led deeper into the forest. “It feels really creepy here, Oneesan,” Miao whined.
Ran said nothing – but she kept one hand on her sword-hilt. Abruptly she stopped, and motioned for Miao to do the same.
Miao didn’t see Ran’s hand signal and ran straight into her back.
“Watch it!” Ran hissed. “They’re here!”
“Here” had been a farmhouse once. It sat in the remains of a clearing that the forest was in the process of taking back. Somebody must have been trying to reclaim the land, Ran thought. Back before the Great Famine from the looks of it.
One of the sake barrels lay in front, next to a tree, overturned and empty. Sticking out of it was the back end of a small animal. Several other dark shapes lay scattered about, limp huddles of gray-brown fur half hidden in leaf litter and debris.
“Those don’t look like foxes,” Miao said.
“They’re not,” Ran replied. “They’re tanuki.”
“Tanuki?”
“They live in dens under rocks or logs, eat just about anything. Sometimes they come into villages and take things, like if you leave a food offering at a temple or a grave, it’s usually tanuki that take it. I never heard of them taking sake though.” She peered into the tumbledown house. Inside were more unconscious tanuki… and the rest of the sake barrels. “Looks like whoever took the stuff, they stored it in here and the tanuki helped themselves.” She nudged one with her foot; it didn’t move. “They all got so drunk they fell asleep. We’d better find a cart and get the rest of the barrels back before Touji-san misses them.”
“But what about the bear?” Miao demanded.
“What bear? You are such an airhead, Miao! There wasn’t any bear. You drank too much sake and dreamed it.”
“Ran, you’re so mean!” She turned away. “I still think there was a bear,” she muttered.
“Well?” the little man demanded.
Miao beamed and threw open the storehouse door, revealing ranks of neatly-stacked sake barrels.
The brewer gazed at them a long moment. Then he turned toward Ran, glaring. “You’re ten barrels short! What did you do, steal some to sell yourselves?”
Ran bowed her head. “The bandits managed to get past us, but we tracked them to an abandoned house in the forest where they’d stored their loot. By the time we got there, tanuki had gotten into some of the barrels. You’ll probably find them there, it didn’t look like they’ll be waking up any time soon.”
“Tanuki?” the brewer scoffed. “A likely story! Next you’ll say they turned into bears and carried my sake off themselves! You let yourselves get fooled, so you’re not getting anything from me! Not one zeni! Now get out and never let me see your faces again!”
“Hey, that’s not fair!” Miao protested. “We got most of it back for you!”
“Leave it, Miao,” Ran sighed. “If we push it any more, we’re going to end up as suspects. This guy probably never intended to pay us in the first place.”
“Now wait a minute!” the merchant sputtered. “I hired you in good faith! You were the ones who let your accomplices run off with my sake!”
“Oh, now we’re accomplices!” Miao sputtered, taking a step forward.
“Let it go,” Ran said to her. She turned to the brewer. “You know, Touji-san, if you were a little more honest you’d probably have a lot less trouble. You don’t look too healthy. Maybe you ought to start worrying about how you’re going to spend your next life.”
“That’s right,” Miao put in. “Greedy people get reborn as hungry ghosts – if they aren’t condemned to have demons melt down all the money they cheated people out of and pour it down their throats!”
“Humph!” the little man sputtered. “All right – ten zeni. For both of you!” He threw the coins at them. “Now get lost!”
“Oneesan?” Miao wondered.
“What?”
“Do you think the tanuki really did change into bears and take that sake?”
“I don’t know,” Ran admitted. “I’d always thought that stories about tanuki and kitsune were just that – tales that grannies tell to children. But I sure didn’t see any signs of people about – and there were those leaves.” She pulled one out of her sleeve and looked at it. It was withering, but the crude picture was still visible.
“But why didn’t they just turn into people?” Miao persisted.
Ran shrugged. “Maybe bears were easier.” She dropped the leaf. A breeze picked it up and blew it into a dry field where five or six children were playing.
Tanuki-san, tanuki-san, wanna come out and play?
Oh, you're eating. What are you eating?
Tasty pickled plum? Let me have a piece.
Oh, oh, you're a little too greedy.
The children’s chant followed them out of the village.
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran © by Akitarou Daichi, Madhouse, WOWOW etc. “God’s Own Drunk” by Richard Buckley; the version I referred to is found at Lord Buckley’s Mind Bubbles. They aren’t mine; my wig doesn’t bubble that well!
I don’t really know what to call this. It isn’t really a songfic because it doesn’t include the lyrics, and it isn’t a filk for the same reason. I lifted a phrase here and there, but for the most part only the basic outline ended up surviving. I guess it’s a “creative wig bubble” like its source. Well, it’s kind of wiggy anyway. Whatever put it into my head to do it I don’t know; like Miao-oneesan, I am not a drinking woman and can’t say that it came out of a sake-bottle.
Anyway, Touji isn’t properly a name, it’s a word my prewar English-Japanese dictionary gives as “the actual brewer of sake.” Momme, ryou and zeni are Tokugawa-era currency; if you’re really curious I’ve got a chart of money equivalents in my Resources section, albeit from a somewhat later period since I originally researched it for background on Rurouni Kenshin.
The Seven Lucky Gods travel in a Treasure Ship that carries seven jewels: gold, silver, red coral, agate, emerald, crystal and pearl.
Miao’s song is part of a poem by Li Po. Outomo no Tabito was a court poet who lived 665-731 and is remembered for a series of poems in praise of Ran’s favorite beverage.
Hana Matsuri (Flower Festival) is Buddha’s birthday. It was the custom to wash statues of Buddha with a special sweet tea (ama-cha) made from hydrangea. I couldn’t think of a funny way to list the bears, so I just numbered them: Bear #2, Bear #3, etc.
The idea that tanuki (and immature kitsune) use leaves to transform comes from Japanese folklore. It’s in Ponpoko Tanuki (where the children’s rhyme comes from) and a lot of folktales. Drawing a picture on the leaf of the thing being transformed into, though, is something I took from a Yuu Yuu Hakusho manga that Luriko-Ysabeth was good enough to point me to.
The tanuki living in an abandoned farmhouse comes more or less from Ponpoko. A devastating famine struck Japan in the 1780s; this is 85 years or so before Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran takes place. I date the series at sometime between 1854 – the coming of the Black Ships and the beginning of contact with Westerners and Western ideas – and the beginning of the Meiji era in 1868.