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1 1 0 Y F O U R J A P A N E S E S T O R I E S R Y Ū N O S U K E A K U T A G A W A Translated by Ryan C. K. Choi Duck Hunting The last time I saw Professor Keigetsu Ōmachi was in 1924, on New Year’s Day, when we went duck hunting in Shinagawa Bay with a group of friends, Misei Kosugi, Taneaki Shindai, and Torayoshi Ichikawa. We met early that morning at the boathouse near Ichi-no Bridge in Honjo, and from there we coasted down the river on our rented motorboat loaded with a day’s worth of supplies . Kosugi and Shindai were both seasoned hunters, and it showed in their confident stance, the quality of their gear, and their style of dress. To make matters worse (I’m extremely selfconscious ), the guide they hired was a renowned hunter himself, whose name is still known by hunters today. In retrospect, the great irony of all this was that, even with these eminent hunters in attendance, none of us shot a single bird that day. Cormorants and ducks alike, on every one of our approaches, spotted our boat without fail, and scattered into the sky before we could take aim. Professor Ōmachi was amused no end at our repeated failures to bag a feathered prize, clapping his hands and laughing whenever a 1 1 1 R flock dispersed and settled at a distance. ‘‘Amazing!’’ he remarked. ‘‘The ducks are literate. Look! They flee to the areas marked ‘No Hunting.’ They know exactly where to go.’’ To everyone’s consternation , throughout the entire outing, Ōmachi’s obnoxious comments blared from beneath his booze-soaked mustache, and the hood of his garish fox-brown hat cast an ominous shadow on the waters around the boat. The spectacle of Ōmachi alone was enough to frighten the ducks away. Thus, we spent a total of ten hours on the bay drifting in the wind, and with nothing to show for it at the end of the day. By the time we returned to the docks, Ōmachi, who had been reveling so garrulously in our misadventure, had sobered up, and was now in a sullen mood. As we were disembarking, he spoke up in a downcast voice, ‘‘I promised my children I would bring home two ducks, one for each of them. I don’t know what to do now, I can’t let them down. They’re planning to give the ducks to their teachers tomorrow as gifts.’’ After discussing it outside the boathouse, we all decided to walk to a nearby poultry house where Ōmachi could buy a pair of ducks. The only problem, Kosugi pointed out after Ōmachi had made his purchase, was that these ducks had been captured with birdlime traps. ‘‘That means,’’ he said, ‘‘there’s no bullet holes in them. Don’t you think your kids will notice? We ought to shoot each of them once, so it looks like they were hunted with rifles. Come on. Let’s do it in the alley over there.’’ Ōmachi shook his head like a timorous child. ‘‘No, they’re fine as is. My children won’t notice the di√erence,’’ he said, wrapping the birdlimed ducks in old newspapers. When he was finished, he said good-bye to us curtly, then carried the bundles home, one under each arm. Date Unknown 1 1 2 A K U T A G A W A Y In Dreams It is said that seeing color in dreams is a sign of exhausted nerves. Ever since I was a child, however, my dreams have always been rich in color, to the point where I have a hard time believing there’s even such a thing as a colorless dream. The other day, for instance, I had a dream in which I ran into the poet H.K. at the seaside baths. He was wearing a hat made of barley straw and a beautiful deep-blue cloak. I was so struck by the blue’s intensity that...

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