Chapter 13 town bonfire and mountains

I started a broom business. In the summer of Showa 21 (that is, 1946), my third son was born, and the family increased to eight people.In the midst of starvation and rising inflation, newspaper salaries alone are by no means enough.There is nothing at home to take to the pawn shop, nor the clothes that farmers like to exchange for rice and potatoes.During the long-term evacuation, the family has sold everything that can be sold.In fact, there was nothing.Since I got married, all I bought for my wife was a short kimono and an obi, and my wife often complained about it.In the future, I worry about what the children wear.

The broom business became a very suitable side job for me.Although the profit is meager, but because of the concentrated quantity, it has become an income that can solve the problem of hunger.I have no capital, and I started out in small batches. I tried not to use the profits as much as possible, and saved them for my own funds. I used Sundays not only in Kokura City, but also at small shops in Moji and Yawata.Because those places are also short of goods, ordering is effortless.The cowardice I felt at first gradually faded away.In order to fill the belly of eight people, I have no other way, I can do anything.

Then, I started to go to the wholesale grocery store.Of course, the father's name was used. "Send as many as you have!" Every store is commissioned like this.Everything is expected, the broom is not yet on the market. However, I am no longer satisfied with being limited to Ogura and Moji.Although they asked me to deliver the goods, the area is too small and the sales capacity is not much. At that time, the newspaper office admitted that the staff's purchasing vacation could take about two days off in a week.I took advantage of this vacation. Hiroshima can be reached in the early morning by taking a late-night train from Kokura.I decided to try my luck in Hiroshima.

Hiroshima is a place with a deep connection with me.My parents were married there.But I had never been to Hiroshima before.Not to be missed.But is it possible to start a modest broom business by going to Hiroshima?I don't want to make money anyway, as long as I can earn train fares and travel expenses.If negotiating with the other party is not ideal, then let it go. When I took the train, I stood all night and couldn’t move. Newspapers were spread in the aisles, people were sleeping, and I couldn’t even go to the toilet.The people lying at the aisle are as shabby as the dirty newspapers spread under them.

In the middle of the night, I heard the listless call of the station staff at the passing small station, which aroused my excitement to go to the hometown I had never seen before.At daybreak, I was almost in Iwakuni, and it took another two hours to get to Hiroshima Station. In the rucksack on my back is a sample of the broom, with rice balls in it.I am going to take the night train to go, and the night train to return.Because travel expenses are involved, and I still have work, I must try to save time. I imagined Hiroshima as a burnt ruin, but now there are many wooden houses on the streets.Early in the morning, the black market starts in front of the station, with men in demobilized uniforms prowling around.I was also wearing the military uniform I brought back from North Korea, and I was wearing high-waisted shoes.

I inquired in front of the station, and it turned out that the grocery wholesale store is far away after crossing the monkey bridge. Monkey Bridge is a nostalgic name, and my mother's sister disappeared on this bridge.Fifteen years later, my aunt suddenly appeared in front of everyone as a miner's wife. "Zhijiang disappeared on the Yuanhou Bridge. We searched for her overnight. In the end, we still didn't know where she was. I didn't expect that after fifteen years, she would suddenly come to see us again." Mother often said this. I stood on the monkey bridge, the river was black and muddy.From here to the area around Badingo, a town of wooden houses has been built.I came to the street that someone pointed me to, and there was a wholesale grocery store with a large shop on the right.The shop is full of wild rice bags and boxes.I walked back and forth in front of the store two or three times, and finally made up my mind to go in.

The boss is a fat man, so fat that he seems to be able to practice judo.I took out the broom from my rucksack and showed it to him. He held the bamboo handle, beat it in and out two or three times, looked at it, and said to a person who happened to be walking by and seemed to be traveling with him: "Having this is better than nothing." "How much is this?" he asked again. I feel very close to the Hiroshima dialect. "Oh! Millet brooms were imported from Okayama before the war, but there are no such brooms available so far. Alas, now we can only make do with such brooms."

He didn't even ask for a price, he just said that a few bundles would do. I left there relaxed and happy. This time I made a special trip to Okura. The business of the family was not enough, so I went to Hatchobori again. At that time, Hatchobori still looked like it had been burned.Only the building of a department store called Fukuya stood there alone.The rest are sparsely built low wooden houses.The concrete foundation and crooked steel bars were left there, not yet installed.Near the Fuya department store, a small store specializing in wholesale groceries was built, and it also said that they could give away two or three bundles for a look.

I took the night train back, and there was still some time. I walked around the war-torn city of Hiroshima that day. In the central area when the atomic bomb fell, except for the wreckage of the bank, the only few buildings were half destroyed, and no wooden houses were built in this area.The stone steps outside the bank gate were blackened by burns.Climb up Mount Hiji, and you can see that the streets of Hiroshima have been burnt to the ground. On the other side of the hill, in Ujina, most of the old houses are still preserved.It is precisely because those houses are still preserved that people feel terrible about the dilapidated walls and ruins in Hiroshima City.The new wood of the isolated wooden houses is dazzling.

The once-a-month trip to Hiroshima is limited to doing business in the city, which is a bit uneconomical.In order to take the night train, I have to spend half a day in Hiroshima City. I think it is a pity, and I always think about whether I can use it to do something on the way back.I checked the train timetable. After entering Yamaguchi Prefecture, there is a town called Hofu. It takes three hours from Hiroshima to get there, and four hours from Hofu to Kokura. If I finished my business in Hiroshima in the morning and took the noon train to Hofu at 3:00, I could stay there for an hour, and then I took the next train back to Kokura, and it was already midnight when I arrived in Kokura.

I want to see what I don't understand.It just didn't make sense to take the night train from Kokura to and from Hiroshima, so I put the plan into practice. Hofu is a town where old houses of building warehouses are lined up along the river.The shadows of the white walls are projected on the river, the shops in the town, and the tents surrounded by lattice windows on the tatami mats in the dark inside are hung with running curtains. My "business" is busy.After accepting the order, I have to make an order with the production place to catch up with the supply.I just came back from Hiroshima, and I have to take the one-day round-trip train to Saga immediately. The newspaper is not yet functioning as it was before, but the Evening Issue has taken on a different name entirely and has begun, but that doesn't require my work either.False purchases are still being admitted.My freelance side hustle would not be possible without procuring time off. I finally put my feet up in Osaka. Take the night train at around 6:00 pm, and arrive in Osaka at around 7:00 the next morning.Then go to the store in Tennoji, go around Kyoto, and take the night train back.The train arrived in Hiroshima around five o'clock the next day. —Winter is here, and the weather is turning cold.In front of Hiroshima Station, there are several bonfires burning in the square.I stretched out my hand, and I was asked to pay the "warming fee".There are stalls selling gnocchi soup.In the square, although it was not bright, many people had already gathered.By the time of full daylight the bonfires abated.By the time the sun came out, the crowd had dispersed, leaving only black ash behind.In front of the dark Hiroshima Station, the red-burning bonfire made people feel the cold night on their backs. It's so early in the day, it's inconvenient for me to go to the wholesale store.All I have to do is take the order and at the same time collect payment for the goods delivered in the past.So, until the shops open, I can only wander around the city.It is very taboo to ask for money early in the morning. Sometimes I took the train to Ujina, and sometimes I went up Mt. Hiji to pass the time.I often watch the morning sun burst out on the island in the Ujina Sea. Going to Osaka can't satisfy me again.In other words, even if you arrive in the morning, you cannot leave Osaka Station until the evening.I also gradually got tired of sightseeing in the city to pass the time.I thought that since I made a special trip to Osaka, I might as well go to Kyoto to do business. The store that started ordering is at Awataguchi, which is on the Sanjo Ohashi-Otsu tram line. "Hey, did it come from Ogura in Kyushu? That's really disgusting!" A person who looked like a shopkeeper said to me in surprise. Why do people in Kansai say Ogura instead of KOKURA, but OGURA?Maybe it's because there is an OGURA mountain (Ogura mountain) in Kyoto! As long as it is in stock, as much as I want, the money is paid to me in cash.Therefore, to negotiate a sale, if you are lucky, twenty minutes in one store is enough.It didn't work that way later, but it was still easy to handle then.Going around from Osaka to Kyoto, there is still plenty of time.When I visited Kyoto, I also carried a broom sample in my shoulder bag, but there was no place to see afterwards. Finally, Otsu.I thought of going there, because once, I was in the center of the store in Awaharaguchi, looking absently at the train bound for Otsu, and thinking that I could go to Otsu in thirty minutes, I made up my mind to open up there.The shop in Otsu is located in the street in front of the pier, into a narrow alley to the east. In January of the 23rd year of the Showa era (that is, 1948), I boarded the cable car from the Yase area.I put on my overcoat and a rucksack with short and long broom heads in it.I was the only passenger on the cable car.Over the snow-capped mountain top, and it's just me. Looking down from the top of Siming Mountain, I stood in the snow for a long time without feeling cold. I've been fond of geography since elementary school, but back then there were no photographs in the textbooks, and they were mostly letterpress drawings.Those paintings made me wonder how many dreams I had.It can be said that I learned the charm of travel from geography textbooks!There are finally photos in Tayama Hanaburo's travel book.Since I was a child, I felt that I would not be able to travel far in my life, so I have always had a longing for travel.However, here, neither a picture nor a photo, what I saw was the real Lake Biwa. When I came to the root hall, I still didn't meet a single person.When I went down to the Hiyoshi Shrine at the foot of the mountain, I met people for the first time. That night, I was looking for a place to stay in the streets of Sakamoto, and no matter which hotel was closed, it seemed that there were no guests. I also used my spare time to visit Sakai, Quanzhou.There is a neat wholesale store called Sano Store, which also sells sundries, near the castle site. Every place has its own unique mountains.As the train approached the town, the mountains there came into view.There is Bald Mountain in Hofu City, the island in the sea of ​​Ujina City is very similar to Mount Futu, Mount Rokko is near Kobe, Mount Hiei towers north of Kyoto, and Mount Hira can be seen from Otsu.And in the distance of the Saga Plain, those looming mountains. ——There are distant mountains and nearby mountains. The image of those mountains can remind people of the city's style.Whenever I slowly approach the mountain I have seen from the window of the train, the life of that city expands in my heart. The task of purchasing food is mainly completed when ordering finished brooms in the Saga countryside.In this broom-producing village, along the earth embankment of the Kanzaki River, there were fifteen or sixteen households.At first, it was an amateur farm work, but after the war, the demand suddenly increased, and no matter which family had a broom. The Saga Plain is famous for its rice production. After the autumn harvest, there is no time to thresh the rice during the year, and the rice is piled up in the field with rice ears.Walking along the fields in November, you can see piles of rice piled up in the rice fields after harvesting, so there is no shortage of stalks (stalks of various plants). The material used to tie the broom is pounded with a wooden mallet, the pistil inside is removed, washed with water, and dried in the sun.This place calls it "Spow".The place in Hiroshima is called "稾西甜".In order to collect rice, the whole family of the broomstickers went out to the nearby farms.As the brooms sold better, the supply of rice began to run short, and production prices rose.Everywhere it was understood that brooms were selling well, and new brokers arose.The profit of the goods I contacted gradually decreased. But if it is said that the farmer is unwilling to give me the goods according to the price I offer, that is not true.There are also difficulties in places where production is booming.The main reason is that there is not enough bamboo and iron wire to tie the broom, especially after the implementation of the unified marketing system, the iron wire is no longer available on the market.The broom is mainly made of No. 22 iron wire, which is aluminum-plated. "As long as you get the wire, you can tie as much as you want!" Every producer says so.In order for them to tie the broom out, I had to find the wire.

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