One Dog Day in Summer — A Kyoto Tale

On the sixteenth day of August, two men wearing Hawaiian print shirts and dark sunglasses crossed a bridge over the Kamogawa. They both had on shorts, white socks and sports shoes, and carried identical blue backpacks.??

In any other Japanese city, the two foreigners — one short and stocky, the other tall and rangy — might have resembled an amateur comedy duo hurrying to a gig. But in Kyoto, on a thoroughfare thronging with tourists and city folk swathed in colourful yukata, they moved towards their destination unnoticed.

The short one, Ballou, walked with purpose; the tall one, Mundy, with a slight limp. Sweat darkened the pineapple and hibiscus motifs of their shirts, and though their foreheads glistened and their mouths hung open, neither slowed his pace until they reached the opposite bank and entered a hillside neighbourhood of narrow, winding streets.

‘Time out,’ said Ballou, halting in the gateway of an old townhouse. They swigged noisily from their water bottles then set off again, fighting the gradient, dripping like noodle sieves, until the street narrowed and the Kamogawa showed itself between the tiled rooftops.

At the top of the street they arrived at a small park filled with colour and noise. ‘There,’ Ballou said, pointing with his chin to a crowded stall set beneath a large paulownia tree. Buddhist monks moved back and forth behind the counter, receiving donations and passing out rough strips of cedar wood to old and young, sightseers and locals, and everyone in between. Onto these the visitors penned prayers and messages, then handed them back to the monks.?

Ballou passed a coin to one of the monks and received a length of wood. He wrote slowly, carefully, a message in good Japanese to a woman he had known, whom he had loved, and lost, and to whom he had promised that he would be on this mountain on this day in the Year of the Dog, the zodiac year of her birth.?

Mundy removed his sunglasses. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his arm and searched the crowd for signs of law enforcement. Satisfied, he slipped the glasses into his pocket, glanced at his wristwatch and said, ‘C’mon chief, let’s roll.’?

A sudden commotion sounded behind them. A group of young men with towels wrapped around their nut-brown heads pushed through the crowd, and reaching the stall, hoisted the boxes filled with prayer sticks onto their shoulders and set off up the hill. Ballou and Mundy followed.?

The neighbourhood fell away and soon the climbing party entered a forest. As the gradient steepened and the path zig-zagged, the two men heard only their own laboured breathing as they hustled to keep pace with the porters. All at once, the trees were gone and they found themselves standing in the open. A dusty trail snaked upwards through the low scrub.

‘I thought this wasn’t a tourist attraction,’ said Mundy, looking with dismay at the steady stream of young and old which flowed up and down the path.?

Ballou shrugged. ‘Me, too,’ he said.

It was now early evening and the air hung hot and heavy over the city. A temple bell sounded somewhere far off. The two men paused to catch their breaths and to look down on the cross-hatched patterns of shimmering lights which spread across the ancient capital like a blanket of jewels. The view inspired Mundy to speak: ‘Somewhere down in that suffocating soup is a business owned by a greedy little man who fleeced us of our wages, our holiday pay, our rent money.’ He paused. ‘And inside that toad’s office is a safe made by Kumahira of Tokyo, makers of the strongest safes in Japan. And inside that safe is a postcard of Waikiki with ‘Arigatou-gozaimasu!’ written on it.’

Mundy grinned, but Ballou said nothing. For him, watching the city, with its glittering lights and wide flowing river, seemed to elicit a different set of thoughts. He looked up quickly; a thunderhead of purple and crimson clouds rose against the darkening sky.?

‘Chief, you alright?’ asked Mundy.?

‘Wonder if it’ll rain?’

‘Hope not — we got stuff to burn.’

When they turned back to the trail, the porters had separated, stopping at ten-metre intervals to unload their burdens at small concrete platforms. On each of these platforms stood a pyre of neatly stacked prayer sticks, and around it a skirt of dried straw had been fashioned. Bundles of kindling lay beside each one. Dozens of pyres formed an arching line all the way to the top of the mountain. There, another line of pyres ran horizontally. A third line, symmetrical to the first, ran from the junction of the first two lines and arched all the way back down the mountainside, thus completing the kanji character 大, dai (big).

Ballou and Mundy pressed on, oblivious to the banter of the porters and pyre builders, the crackle of their two-way radios, and the rich odours of scented wood and dried straw which rose from the dusty earth. The sun had set, and with it had gone any hope of a breeze.?

Mundy wore a grimace. His limp had grown worse; a limp acquired from kicking a one-tonne Kumahira safe in frustration. If Ballou hadn’t cooled him, calmed him, allowed him to refocus, and to trawl his memory for the combination of twists and turns which had momentarily eluded him, he might have done himself greater damage. For a brief moment his frown faded. He thought of the fat, green safe lying empty in that stuffy downtown office — and the thought pleased him. It pleased him almost as much as the half a million yen in tight bundles which now pressed against the small of his back as he hobbled up the trail.?

Only when they stood atop the crest and looked down did they realise the magnitude of the event.?

‘The whole freakin’ city is watching us,’ said Mundy.

‘We’re hiding in plain sight,’ said Ballou. ‘Be cool.’

Mundy knew his friend was right. It was the reason he’d agreed to make this side-journey part of their getaway plan. Yet, even with his promise that they’d both be on the 11:35 night flight to Chiang Mai that evening, Mundy fretted that sentimentality might ruin everything.

The fug shifted. A shrill whistle sounded from somewhere below them. The pyre teams leapt into action. Lighted tapers flared against straw and flames quickly licked at the wood. Smoke billowed, filling the night air with its bitter-sweet tang. Up and down the mountainside the three giant kanji strokes twinkled for the entire city to admire.?

Ballou slipped off his backpack and fossicked. From a side pocket he pulled a brown envelope and emptied the contents into his hand.?

‘She’s watching,’ said Mundy, eyeing the three talismans in his friend’s hand.?

‘She sure is,’ said Ballou, as sparks swirled across him from the pyre nearest them. He descended the trail and quickly tossed the three small embroidered pouches — an enmusubi for love, a katsumori for luck, and a yakuyoke to ward off evil — into the flames. Though the fire keepers looked at the foreigners curiously, they said nothing; who were they to stop someone burning old charms? The power of the charms would return to the heavens, just like the prayers and messages on the wooden sticks, bound for the same destination.

Now the fires raged across the mountainside, setting the night aglow above Kyoto, and thus fulfilling an annual tradition of which no one, not even the city elders, knew the origin.?

Presently, a figure ascended the trail and approached Ballou and Mundy. His bald head gleamed in the firelight, oblivious to the showering sparks, until he was close enough for Ballou to recognise him as the monk who had received his prayer stick at the stall.?

‘Good evening,’ said the monk, reaching the mountain crest. Greetings were exchanged and the three of them spoke in Japanese for a few moments. Then the monk slipped a cloth bag from his shoulder, and to Mundy and Ballou’s surprise, produced a bottle of sake and three earthen cups. It was his ritual, he explained; he had been doing it since he was old enough to imbibe.?

‘Good fortune comes to those who see the reflection of Daimonji in their cup,’ he said, passing around the vessels and pouring them full. The three men studied their cups and drank them dry.

‘Did you see the reflection?’ asked the monk.

‘To be honest, I didn’t,’ said Mundy, licking his lips.

‘Then, another?’

Mundy and Ballou held out their cups. But when Ballou tilted his to the firelight, his expression changed. He shifted position, tilting his cup more deeply.?

‘You don’t see it?’ inquired the monk. Ballou didn’t answer; he stepped closer to the fire, though the heat was intense and the sparks swarmed like fireflies. He looked baffled by his cup. He quickly drank and asked for another.

The monk filled the cup without comment. This time Ballou stood closer to the fire, until the heat painfully grazed his cheek and arms. Still he looked vexed.?

‘What’s up, Chief?’ asked Mundy.?

Ballou looked about. ‘Where’s the monk?’

‘He disappeared down the other side of the mountain. What’s the matter?’

‘What about the cups?’

‘A present, he said.’

Meanwhile, the pyres blazed. The fire keepers moved back and forth against their flickering flames, feeding in kindling wood.

‘How are we going to get rid of the masks and gloves with all these people around?’ said Mundy. But when no answer came, he turned to his friend. ‘Jesus, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. You okay?’

‘I’m burning the money.’

Mundy waited for a smile, a guffaw, a noise, or a gesture to affirm his friend’s joke. But none came.

‘Burning what?’

‘I’ve got a bad feeling,’ Ballou said. ‘That was a sign.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I saw nothing in my cup. Nothing but darkness.’

‘You were just dazzled by the fire.’

‘That monk …’

‘Was a really nice guy. He gave us …’

‘He was a messenger.’

‘What?’

Ballou slipped off his pack and rummaged in it once more.

‘What are you doing?’ There was an urgency in Mundy’s voice. ‘Chief!’

The fire keepers, busy on the other side of the pyre, did not see the stocky foreigner toss his brown paper package into their flames. They did not see half a million in Japanese yen notes wither and whiten. What they did see were the flames leap higher, and the higher the better.

Mundy choked. His eyes were so wide that Ballou saw flames reflected in them. ‘What about the plan? Our plan to open a school in Thailand? Live the dream! The frickin’ dream!’

‘Do what you want with yours. It’s your choice. We can still make it happen — just not with my filthy lucre.’?

Mundy began to hyperventilate; he looked close to tears. ‘But it was five hundred thousand yen! Oh Jesus …’

‘We’ve got a plane to catch,’ said Ballou, picking up his backpack and descending the trail of pyres on the other side of the mountain.’ Let’s go!’

?Mundy looked back at the flames and his lips trembled. He glanced at his feet, and saw beside them a large nozzled bottle of accelerant and a barbecue lighter. He picked them up. Then he too was gone. But instead of following his friend, he left the trail and bounded through the scrub. In moments, he reached a small clearing and set down his pack. He pulled out a plastic bag and over this he squeezed the accelerant, then lit it. To his horror, the flame did not take. What he did next might have been an act of solidarity, or survival — or both. Whatever, the effect was instantaneous.

Had the fire keepers and the wide-eyed men with the whistles reached Mundy’s pyre sooner, they would have been in time to witness the rubber faces of two former Japanese prime ministers — Kakuei Tanaka and Yoshiro Mori — along with two pairs of surgical gloves, dissolve in the flames of a half million Japanese yen. As it happened, Mundy panicked and dropped the accelerant into the fire as he sprinted downhill to join Ballou. The bottle exploded, sending a projectile of napalm-like substance shooting across the scrub.

Down on the streets, river banks and bridges of Kyoto, an excited murmur rippled through the crowds of spectators who had gathered to witness Daimonji. A single fiery streak had spread down the upper-right side, altering the kanji character, so that instead of ‘Dai’, big (大), it now broadcast to the city an entirely new meaning — Inu, dog (犬).

One Dog Day in Summer was first published in?Structures in Kyoto — Writers in Kyoto Anthology 4?(2021)

More at the author's website: https://www.mightytales.net/