The Scent of Sake (3 page)

Kill the self.
Isn’t that what she’d done when her brother died?

A sliver of guilt wedged inside her heart.

Her mother picked up her sewing again and bent over it. “And remember how fortunate you are. You won’t have to live with a mother-in-law. Your husband is the one who will. He will have the bigger adjustment to make.” She glanced again at Rie.

Rie put her hand over her mouth. She wondered how her mother had had to “kill the self.” Was it the suffering at the loss of little Toichi? Remorse made her cheeks glow hot like the coals from the hibachi. “Yes, Mother.” She bowed to her mother, excusing herself before leaving the room.

She walked slowly down the stairs and along the wooden walkway above the earthen floor, deliberately putting one slipper just in front of the other. She glided into the wooden
geta
and walked out to the gated garden. She opened the creaking weathered gate and stepped onto the large round stones toward a huge boulder. She leaned against it and gazed toward the koi pond.

Of course this was bound to happen. Once parents neared fifty, they were anxious to get the succession settled. Her marriage could not be postponed. Besides, her mother said she and Rie’s father cared for each other, and she knew this to be true. Maybe the same would be true for Rie and her husband. At any rate, there was no choice. She would have to marry Jihei. She would have to forget Saburo Kato. Not that she could.

That night Rie sat musing in front of her dressing cabinet. “Kill the self,” her mother had said.
How would it ever be possible to kill the self and still continue to live, to survive,
she wondered? She recalled the death a few years ago of one of the kurabito, something her mother had grieved long, almost as long as with Toichi, as it was her responsibility to ensure the health of all the workers in the brewery.

Rie gazed at her reflection, at the face she overheard some—

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one in the office say belonged to a farm woman, something he had dared to say only when her father was not in the room. She sighed. Although her eyes were large and arresting, her teeth protruded slightly, there was no denying. She knew she was not a beauty, in the classical sense. She thought suddenly of the way her father banished her to the kitchen, wanted to keep her away from the business side of the brewery, especially transactions involving cash, something to which women of Kansai merchant houses had no access. How was she to fulfill her responsibility to the house if she wasn’t allowed to be involved in the business of brewing? She sighed deeply and sat several minutes at the mirror before laying out the futon.

Arranged marriage was the way. She would not
kill the self
. She would find a way to survive.

The most elegant tearoom in Kobe was reserved for the formal meeting of the two families, with Mr. and Mrs. Nakano presid-ing as go-betweens. Rie bit her lip and held her breath as, attired in an elegant pale blue kimono of the finest silk, she entered the gold screened room behind her parents. She was able to see, even with her head properly bowed throughout the meeting, that she was right about Jihei. He did have a large nose and startling eyebrows. She continued to gaze at the lacquer plate before her as her parents and the Okamotos exchanged the perfunctory courtesies that sealed her fate. She sat perfectly still, her emotions tightly in check as she listened with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

A few days after the meeting the Omuras offered their formal proposal. The Okamotos accepted, and the last good fortune day in the May calendar was selected.

Rie spent the next days and weeks trying on the kimono she would own for the rest of her life. As she fingered the
kasuri,
silk and brocade fabrics, and counted the days, she wondered about

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the stranger her parents had selected as her husband. Would he be as boring as his face? Or would he surprise her? The wedding day approached, the day every woman knew was the most important day in her life. Then why did she have such a feeling of foreboding?

Rie’s wedding, her father told her, would be remembered in Kobe as a major event of the year 1825. He often talked to Rie about major events, unwittingly piquing her interest in matters supposedly of no concern to women. The shogunate and its neo-Confucian maxims was one of his favorite topics. The shogunate was in deep financial crisis, something her father discussed with fervor.

“What do we care for the Neo-Confucianism of the shoguns, this so-called philosophy that puts us at the bottom of society, below the samurai, the farmers, even the craftsmen? Empty words! Everyone knows we merchants hold the real wealth, that we are the arbiters of culture, not only in Kobe but everywhere.”

Whatever the officials of the shogunate did, including the measures of Chief Councilor Mizuno, all had failed. He had tried to solve the financial crisis through a series of reforms: sumptuary edicts to curtail extravagance, restrictions on festivals and Noh and Kabuki performances, and limits on the activities of pawn—

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brokers. Nothing worked. As Kinzaemon said, it was the merchants, chonin, who held the real wealth. And of the merchants it was the sake brewers and pawnbrokers who were wealthiest. Most brewers of substance were pawnbrokers and moneylenders as well. If the country were to be saved, it would be houses like the Omuras that would save it.

It was natural, then, for the marriage of two major brewing houses to be viewed as an event of great importance. The engagement followed the o-miai, the formal meeting, and the wedding date was fixed. Mrs. Nakano, the most respected go-between in Kobe, was in her element. The plump, energetic brewer’s wife boasted the news of the impending wedding to everyone she encountered, and she had without doubt the widest acquaintance in town. Soon the marriage was eagerly anticipated throughout the whole brewing community.

With the exception of Rie herself, of course.

The match was the talk of the May Brewers Association meeting. The meeting was attended, as usual, by a representative of each brewing house, generally the house head. The chief rival of the Omura House was there, Kikuji Yamaguchi, a bombastic man nearly as large as a sumo wrestler. His
obi
strained over his barrel stomach, and he surveyed the assembled brewers arrogantly. He swaggered and belched as he walked, and boasted loudly that Ogre-Killer would soon be the number one brand of sake in Japan. Kinzaemon overheard him say “
Huh!
She’s marrying Jihei Okamoto. Some choice! What can he do for White Tiger? Well, so much the better for us!” Yamaguchi gloated. During the previous year he had succeeded in capturing ten percent of White Tiger’s market, a serious blow in the competitive world of the brewers.

Kinzaemon, who had sunk into depression following Toichi’s death, seemed discouraged by Yamaguchi’s words. Rie knew this from a conversation she overheard while standing outside the

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office. He was speaking to Kin, she was sure. “This is a bad blow to us, to our position and honor. And he was insulting as well, talking about Rie’s marriage to the Okamoto son.” Listening, Rie felt her anger rising.
How dare Yamaguchi!
“We have lost part of our market to Yamaguchi too.” She had to do something, somehow, to redeem the status of the house and to prove that the Omura House was superior to the Yamaguchi House.

Now, more than ever, marriage to Jihei would be crucial for the continuity and prosperity of the house, Rie knew. Kinzaemon had carefully chosen Jihei after a thorough investigation by Mrs. Nakano. The family of the groom, its reputation and standing, the training of the groom, the absence of contagious disease in the family—all these things had been weighed by Kinzaemon and his wife so that Yamaguchi could have nothing bad to say about the marriage. But everyone knew Yamaguchi was always bragging.

“Most unseemly for a man in his position. The other brewers should have enough sense not to take Yamaguchi’s remarks seriously,” Hana said one evening, seeking to comfort her husband. Preparations for the wedding prompted a steady stream of vendors in the office and house of the Omuras: caterers for the reception, weavers and dyers from Nishijin in Kyoto, and seamstresses coming and going in a seemingly unending procession

each day.

“Must we invite three hundred guests?” Rie asked. “All those return gifts will be such an expense.”

Hana looked at Rie and smiled thoughtfully. “This is a modest list, Rie. You know it would be a bad oversight if we omitted even one of the major brewing houses. The list is critical. Besides, you are our only child and this is one of the most important events for our house.”

But even Rie’s mother had to admit the trousseau was impressive: three four-drawer aromatic cedar
tansu
chests with copper

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fittings, several sets of cotton and silk linens, and two dozen silk kimonos and brocade obis of every color, including formal black, sewn by the best Nishijin seamstresses.

Dressing the bride took all morning. Rie had to rise at dawn for a bath. Her mother and O-Natsu watched as two women unfolded the silk under-kimonos. They adjusted the sleeves and collars as Rie held out her arms for the many layered undergarments. She tried to stand patiently as the women worked, but her growing anxiety made it hard to stand still. Finally she lifted her arms so the outer kimono could be adjusted in place. The kimono was white silk with an exquisite design of pine, plum, and bamboo below knee level, signifying strength, courage, and harmony. The obi was adorned with a complimentary pattern outlined in gold thread. To Rie, tying the wide obi seemed to take forever. At the neck the collar was arranged so that the proper amount of under-kimono revealed the subtlest variations of white.

Rie’s hair was piled into three sections over which was laid the wide white silk band to hide the bride’s “devils’ horns,” symbolizing that a wife was never to display jealousy, whatever her husband chose to do. She doubted Jihei
could
make her jealous! Her face and neck were painted chalk white. Fitting for how she felt. “But Mother, I feel twice as large as normal. I won’t be able to move,” Rie complained. She looked in the mirror that O-Natsu held for her and gasped. “I don’t even look like myself,” she