The
Secret Recipe
Part
1
“Damn it! I’ve failed again.”
Hisakichi Matsumoto bit his lower lip in frustration, reading the Gifu Miso-shoyu
Daily News. The shoyu (soy sause) he made failed to win a prize in the annual
Gifu Prefecture Shoyu Competition. This was his third consecutive failure in
the last three years. The first prize went to Marukin shoyu produced in
Takayama.
He
couldn’t face his ancestors, as his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all
won first prize in the competition when they participated. It was his
great-grandfather, Chuemon, who opened the Shimizu-ya branch in Ikeda, Gifu
Prefecture in 1874. He began to work as an apprentice for Shimizu-ya’s Main Shop
in Osaka at the age of 14, became the head clerk at 34, and was allowed to open
the branch at 38.
“What’s
the difference between Marukin shoyu and my Kikusui shoyu?” he pondered.
He
ordered a bottle of Marukin shoyu to compare the two. When it was sent to him, he
asked his wife, Ikuyo, to tend to the shop and went to the shoyu brewing
factory with the bottles of Marukin and Kikusui in his hands. He sat at the
desk by the window and stared at the bottles on his desk. It was just after the
slight drizzle and the skin-sticky humidity had disappeared. A pleasant breeze
was coming through the window.
Hisakichi opened the cap of Marukin and placed a few drops on a small
white plate. The black Marukin shoyu was vivid against the white. As he put his
nose near the plate, the smell stimulated his nostrils. It was a good smell. Next,
he smelled his Kikusui. Its smell was as good as Marukin’s.
Next, he compared their colors. First, he stirred Marukin shoyu with a
chopstick. The thick black liquid became thinner as he spread the shoyu toward
the edge of the plate. He looked at the grey part of the shoyu. No uneven
spots. Then, in the same way, he looked at the stretched Kikusui shoyu in the
plate. Its color was as good as Marukin’s.
Lastly, he compared their taste. He dipped his forefinger in Marukin
shoyu and licked it. He let the flavor roll off his tongue. The good taste
spread in his mouth. Um, nice thick taste. He then rinsed out his mouth and
tasted Kikusui. Hm, no distinct difference. If there were any, Marukin was
mellower and smoother and had a wheat flavor, while his was, if anything,
slightly salty.
“Dad, lunch is ready,” Rika, the oldest of his three daughters, had
come for him. She was 8-year-old and spirited. Her nickname was Gutsy. Her
classmates were always on alert when they saw Rika coming toward them. “Gutsy
is coming!” they would say. Once she was wrestling with a big boy and
dislocated his arm. Her mother, Ikuyo, was summoned to school by Rika’s
homeroom teacher and had to apologize to him.
Now, Ikuyo had a new life in her body.
Hisakichi hoped for a boy; otherwise, no one would inherit his shop. If the
fourth child was a girl again, they would have to have a fifth, he thought.
However, few families had as many as five children when 30 years had passed
after the World War II, during which the slogan “Beget and Multiply” was often
heard.
Five years ago, his shop changed its name from Shimizu-ya branch to Shimizu-ya
Main Shop, because it went bankrupt; the head-clerk and one of the maids ran
away from the shop after stealing all the money. Soon, the owner of the main
shop asked Hisakichi’s father, Chukichi, to inherit the name of Shimizu-ya Main
Shop. Therefore, now that Chukichi had retired, Hisakichi was the owner of the
long-established Shimizu-ya Main Shop.
One evening when the three daughters went to bed, Hisakichi and Ikuyo
were watching the then popular TV drama, “Kozure-okami” (Samurai with a child).
Ikuyo was a great fan of Kinnosuke Yorozuya, the main character of the drama.
Part
2
During a commercial break Hisakichi took his eyes off the television
and looked at Ikuyo’s belly. It was swollen as if a baby would pop out at any
moment.
“Ouch,” she said.
“Does it kick you?” he said.
“Yes, violently.”
“Then, it must be a baby boy,” he said.
“Probably.”
“But….Rika kicked you a lot, didn’t she?”
“Yes, I know, but I’m sure it is a boy,” she said.
Several days later close to the due date, Ikuyo went to her parents’
home in Okujo Town near Yoro Waterfall to have the baby. The three daughters
had been born there. While Ikuyo was away, Kayoko, Hisakichi’s sister, came to
help him with the shop and housework.
On the expected date of birth, Hisakichi was using his abacus to calculate
the amount of sales, but because he was restless and unable to concentrate on
the tool, every time he finished the calculation, he found the abacus showing
different amount.
“Damn it. I’d rather be stirring the moromi than using the abacus,”
he thought.
Moromi is made in the following way. First, mix steamed soybeans,
roasted wheat, and rice malt. Next, put the mixture into salt water in a vat. The
salty mixture is called moromi. If you regularly stir the moromi liquid for
more than a year and a half, you get shoyu.
He walked to the shoyu-brewing factory which stood at the opposite
side across the street from his shop, and opened the door. The smell of moromi filled
his nostrils. He switched on the light. There were six huge wooden vats containing
moromi in the spacy wooden building. Three of them stood facing the other three.
Each vat was 2.5 meters high and 2.3 meters in diameter.
Hisakichi climbed the ladder leaning against one of the vats and
stood on a 30-centimeter wide plank that crossed it. The plank extended to the adjacent
vat. He began to stir the moromi liquid with a 1.5 meter-long, T-shaped paddle
rod.
While Hisakichi was stirring the fourth vat, Rika sneakily entered
the factory.
“Dad! I want to stir it, too,” she said.
“Don’t surprise me, Rika. No, no. It’s dangerous. You may not. I
have repeatedly told you not to come to the factory. Go back…. Well, have you
got a telephone call from your mother yet?”
“No, I haven’t,” she said.
“OK, then. Go back to the shop. This is no place for a girl,” he
said.
“That’s no fun,” she said disappointedly and left the factory.
When Hisakichi finished stirring all the six vats, he climbed down
the ladder, sweaty all over and sat at the desk by the window. He looked
around.
There were a lot of things besides the giant vats: barrels and
bottles, crocus sacks for soybeans and wheats, coal for heating high-pressure
pans, wooden frames for bottles, and kojibuta (shallow wooden trays). He also
saw three tin boxes piled at the back of the factory. The boxes preserved the account
ledgers and notebooks which his ancestors had written in.
Looking at the boxes, he remembered that his grandfather was reading
the documents in earnest. Once when he was 12 years old, he opened one of the
boxes and tried to read them, but all the words were Chinese characters written
with a brush; he could not read them at all.
More than 40 years had passed since then. Wiping away the sweat, he
thought that Chuzaemon, his great-grandfather, might have written the secret
method of brewing the finest shoyu.
He stood up and went to the piles of boxes and opened the box, which
had ‘Chuzaemon’ written on the lid.
Hisakichi began to read the documents expecting to find the key, but
to his disappointment, they described just ordinary methods of brewing shoyu:
how to steam soybeans, how to sprinkle seed malt, how to pile kojibuta, and the
amount of salt to be used for making moromi. Nothing was written about how to
brew the finest shoyu.
After scanning almost all the ledgers and notebooks, he took up the
purchase book, which described what items Chuzaemon had bought to brew shoyu.
He was again disappointed to see nothing special was written in it. The things
he had purchased were: soybeans, wheat, seed malt, salt, rice, coal, etc.
However, he found the names of some animals in one page, such as deer, bears,
boars, and ducks.
“Why? Are they related with brewing shoyu?” he wondered and turned
the pages and was surprised, when he
heard Kayoko running to him, shouting, “A baby-boy! It’s a boy!”
“Really?”
Part
3
Hisakichi was beside himself with delight. It was a long-awaited
baby boy!
Ten days later, Ikuyo came back home with the baby. They named him
Noboru. Hisakichi’s new boisterous life with his wife, three daughters, and Noboru
began.
However, Noboru died of pneumonia in the winter a year and a half later.
Ikuyo was full of grief. At the end of the funeral, she cried and cried
throwing her arms around the tiny coffin like she would never leave it.
In those days in Ikeda Village, the deceased were either buried or
cremated. There was no crematory in the village. Therefore, if you wanted
cremate the deceased, you had to carry the coffin to the crematory in the next
town. As Ikuyo wished, Noboru was interred in the cemetery at Shorinji Temple.
The monk’s chant was heard around the grounds of the temple as the incense
sticks burned.
A year and a half later, they had a baby boy again. They named him
Ken and, besides that, Hisakichi won the long-cherished first prize in the Gifu
Prefecture Shoyu Competition. All the judges praised the taste of Kikusen Shoyu
saying, “This is excellent. It tastes far better than any other shoyu. It is
mild and has an adequate thickness.”
On the day of Bon or the Buddhist Festival of Souls in August, Kayoko
and her three children came to Hisakichi’s house to pay homage to the ancestors’
grave in Shorinji Temple. The oldest of the three was a 9-year-old boy named
Takashi, a year younger than Rika. The other two were 7-year-old and 6-year-old
girls. After they returned to Hisakichi’s house from the grave, Kayoko’s
daughters and Ikuyo’s daughters began to play house and marbles as they had a
couple of hours before supper. Rika was not interested in girls’ play.
“Takashi, let’s play hide and seek, shall we?” she said.
“All right,” Takashi said.
“Then, follow me,” Rika said.
Rika took him to the shoyu brewing factory, drew open the heavy
wooden door, and the two children entered it. The moist factory smelled of
shoyu and miso soybean paste. The ceiling was high and six huge moromi vats towered
in front of them. The late afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows and
illuminated the three vats on the eastside of the factory. They were glowing
light brown.
“First, you are it,” Rika said.
“OK,” Takashi said.
Takashi stood facing one of the pillars and began to count, “One,
two, three....”
Rika secretly climbed the ladder that leaned against one of the vats
and stood on the plank that crossed the vat. She looked down at Takashi
counting.
“…nine, and ten!” he said in a loud voice and began to look for
Rika.
He first looked around the entrance door, but Rika was not there.
Next, he stealthily walked to the vats on the eastside of the building, and
then on the westside, but she was not there.
“Where are you hiding, Rika?” he shouted.
His voice reverberated. He heard slight giggling coming from
somewhere above. It was from the central van on the eastside. He rushed to it
and shouted,
“Where are you?”
“Here!” Rika said.
Takashi heard her voice from just above his head. He looked up and
saw Rika standing on the plank across the vat.
“That’s unfair. Nobody can find you if you are hiding there,” he
said.
“What are you talking about? You can hide anywhere. Well, Takashi,
come up here. It’s fun,” she said.
“All right,” he said.
He climbed the ladder and stood on the plank on the vat. He looked
down and saw curry-like moromi, thick brown liquid, filling the vat.
“It’s scary. Let’s get down,” Takashi said.
“Don’t be scared. You’re a boy. Come close to me,” Rika demanded.
Takashi reluctantly moved inch by inch toward her and stood beside
her. There was a T-shaped paddle rod stuck in the moromi. Rika grabbed it and
began to stir the sticky liquid.
“My father is always stirring this way,” she said as she stirred the
moromi, keeping rhythm by uttering yo-ho-ho,
yo-ho-ho.
“That’s enough. Let’s stop and go back,” Takashi pleaded.
Part 4
“Not, yet. Next, you stir the moromi. If you have stirred it well,
we will go back home,” Rika said and turned to Takashi to hand the rod to him.
He cautiously reached out to get it, but he lost his balance and fell into the
moromi. It was 1.8 meters deep. He sank into the thick liquid as if he had
fallen into a bottomless swamp. Instantly, he disappeared in the brown mud-like
moromi. Rika panicked and moved the rod up and down around the area where he
had fallen, but she hit nothing solid.
“Takashi!
Takashi!” she screamed desperately.
She stirred the moromi around the spot again and again, and finally, the
rod felt heavy. She thought Takashi had grabbed it. She tried to pull it up. It
was heavy. Then, his hands holding the rod appeared from the moromi, and his
head appeared. His face was sticky with the brown liquid. Takashi breathed in
deeply. Rika held the rod firmly.
“Takashi,
hold on to the rod tightly!” she said in a high-pitched voice, and began to
pull the rod up, but as it was sticky, his hands slipped it and his body sank
in the mud again. Every time she pulled the rod, his hands slipped and his body
sank. He breathed in deeply whenever he was pulled up. His eyes were as red as
blood. Rika realized that she would not save him even if she repeated the same
action a hundred times.
She looked around holding the rod in her hands firmly. She would have to
call someone’s help, but while she was running for help, Takashi had to hold on
to something solid. She looked around for something that would help her. There
was a pillar near the vat and a wound hose was hung from the peg on it. The
hose was used for filling the vat with water.
“Hold
on tight, Takashi!” she said in a loud voice and began to walk on the plank
toward the hose inch by inch holing the rod in her right hand. She at last
reached the hose, grabbed the end of the hose with her left hand and hauled in
it.
Takashi repeated the same action: he slipped the rod and sank in the
moromi and tried to climb the rod again. The hose extended about 2.5 meters
long. She pulled it hard. It stopped extending. She pulled it hard again, and
felt the hose was strong enough to hold Takashi.
“Takashi,
can you see the hose in my hand? I will throw it at you. You must catch it and
hold onto it,” she shouted.
“One,
two, three!” she said and threw the hose. Takashe let go the rod and grabbed
the hose successfully and put his head above the surface of the moromi. He was
breathing hard.
“Takashi,
breathe in as deep as possible. Don’t sink. I’ll call someone to help you. Hang
on!”
Takashi did not answer but just held on to the hose.
Rika hurriedly climbed down the ladder. Would he survive until she
rushed to the shop, called someone for help, and came back? She was full of
anxiety. It would take three minutes; no, at least four minutes. Would Takash
survive?
She got down the ladder, but as soon as her foot touched the floor, she
began to climb the ladder. What would she be doing?
Takashi was still holding on to the hose.
She climbed the ladder and stood on the plank.
“Takashi,
I’ll save you!” she shouted.
She pulled out the rod from the moromi and rushed down the ladder with
the rod in her hand.
Double bungs were put on the lower part of the vat: One was called
nomi-guchi, eight centimeters in diameter and has a hole in it. The other was a
small one called nomi which was two centimeters in diameter. The nomi was plugged
in the hole of the nomi-guchi. A shoyu-maker turns the nomi slightly and let the
newly brewed shoyu out.
Rika stood near the vat with the rod. She swung the rod like a golf club
and hit the nomi-guchi hard to remove it from the vat. The sound of the crack
resounded in the vacant factory. Because the nomi-guchi was so firmly inserted
in the vat, it did not move. She swung the rod again and hit it harder, but it
did not come out from the vat. She hit it again and again, and at last when she
hit it fourth time, it moved a little making a slight gap between the nomi-guchi
and the vat. Suddenly the shoyu gushed out from the gap, pushing out the nomi-guchi.
Soon it came out from the vat and the shoyu burst out. The brown liquid flew forward
about a meter and the floor was flooded with the shoyu all over.
Rika hurriedly climbed the ladder and stood on the plank. Takashi was
drowning in the moromi, desperately struggling in it
Part ５
“Takashi,
hold on to the hose with all your might!” Rika cried at the top of her lungs.
She pulled up the hose carefully enough so
that he would not slip down deeper into the moromi, but however carefully she
tried, he gradually slipped down. However, as he was going down, the moromi was
also getting lower and lower because it was gushing out of the hole of the vat.
Now the surface of the liquid went down as low as Takashi’s neck allowing him
to breathe. Then it went lower than his chest, and at last his foot that had
been struggling in the moromi touched the bottom of the vat.
Kayoko, who was looking for Takashi and Rika because supper was ready,
happened to meet Hisakichi in front of the shop. He had just arrived at the
shop by bicycle after finishing delivering shoyu and miso to the customers.
“Hisakichi,
supper is ready, but I can’t find Takashi and Rika anywhere,” she said.
“They
may be in the factory,” he said.
Hisakichi and Kayoko walked to the factory, opened the door, and were
taken aback to see a flood of brown moromi liquid all over the floor glittering
red illuminated by the light of the setting sun through the windows. A thick
smell of half-brewed shoyu filled their nostrils.
“Takashi!”
Kayoko shouted.
“Rika,
are you here?” Hisakichi’s voice resonated in the vacant building.
“I’m
here!” Rika’s high-pitched voice was heard.
Hisakichi and Kayoko looked at each other momentarily.
“Takashi,
your mother is here!” Rika said in a relived but strong voice.
Takashi was standing on the bottom of the vat his body covered with the
sticky brown moromi. The liquid was now as high as his knee, and it was getting
lower and lower every second.
When the liquid got down to around 10 centimeters deep, a queer thing,
as large as a puppy, appeared in the moromi. Rika wondered what it was and looked
at it. As the level of the moromi went down, the sticky brown thing revealed
its shape. When the moromi was only five centimeters deep, Rika screamed:
“Aiiieee!”
It
was a baby. A baby covered in moromi was lying on the bottom of the vat on its
back with its legs and arms sticking out into the air. It looked like the shape
of a child who had been buried in the Pompeii ruins.
Rika squatted, unable to keep standing on the plank, and then stood up
and climbed down the ladder trembling with fear. When her foot reached the
floor, she rushed toward the entrance of the factory, and nearly ran into
Kayoko.
“A
goblin! A baby goblin!” Rika shouted and rushed out of the factory.
Takashi standing on the bottom of the vat was surprised to hear her,
looked around, and found a brown baby-shaped thing.
“Oh,
no! Help me! Get me out!” he screamed.
Hisakichi climbed the ladder so quickly that he took a misstep, fell on
the floor, and bruised his hip. Kayoko climbed to the top of the ladder and
looked at the bottom of the vat, where she caught sight of the macabre-looking
baby covered with sticky brown liquid lying just beside Takashi. The sight was
so gruesome that she nearly fell from the plank into the vat but she managed to
keep balance.
“Mom,
get me out!” Takashi cried.
“Grab
the hose, Takashi! I’ll get you out now!” Kayoko said in a strong voice.
Takashi tried to grab the hose but he had lost all his strength and was
unable to even hold it in his hands.
“Takashi,
grab the hose. Grab the hose!” she cried, but Takashi was too exhausted to do
so. He just stood absent-mindedly on the bottom of the vat.
Hisakichi managed to climb the ladder and stood on the plank and looked
at Takashi and the horrible shape of a baby. He closed his eyes momentarily as
if he saw something unbelievable, something he should not look at. He walked on
the plank and stood beside Kayoko.
“Are
you all right, Takashi?” he said and pulled the ladder up and lowered it in the
vat.
“Climb,”
he said.
Part 6
Takashi climbed down the ladder
dripping the moromi liquid and gripped Kayoko’s extended hand. She dragged him
up onto the plank. When he stood on it, he cried loudly throwing his wet arms
around her as if he was releasing all his suffering he had underwent in the
vat.
Just then, the baby-shaped thing
which had been on its back turned sideways, making a slight sound. Kayoko was
horrified.
“Look, Hisakichi, isn’t
that a baby?” she said in a trembling voice.
“Mom, let’s go down now! I’m
scared,” Takashi pleaded sobbingly.
“Wait a moment,” she said
looking around. She noticed another ladder leaning against a neighboring vat.
“Takashi, look at the ladder over there. You should climb down it.
“All right,” he said reluctantly,
walked on the plank to it, and climbed down it. On reaching the floor, he was
so exhausted that he was not able to walk even a step. He sat down on the floor
beside the vat.
“Hisakichi, are you with
me? I’m sure it’s a baby. Go and see what exactly it is. It’s spooky.” Kayoko
said.
Hisakichi did not respond.
He looked pale.
“Are you scared?” she said
irritatingly.
“No, definitely no,” he
retorted.
He began to climb down the
ladder resolutely.
When Rika rushed into the
shop, Ikuyo had been talking to the man who had just delivered a bag of
soybeans.
“So, please bring the bag
to the factory,” she said.
“All right,” he said.
Right at that moment, Rika reached
the shop and shouted at her in a terror-stricken voice.
“Mom, a dead baby! A dead
baby! In the factory.”
“What?” she said.
“A dead baby is in the
factory,” Rika said.
The little girls who had
been playing marbles in the adjacent room dashed to the shop hearing Rika’s shouting.
Kayoko ran to
the factory, followed by the delivery man and the girls. Rika followed them at
the end of the procession timidly.
Hisakichi reached the
bottom of the vat, picked up the baby and climbed the ladder with it in his arm.
He stood beside Kayoko, who was filled with fear at the sight.
Ikuyo arrived at
the vat and looked at the baby held in her husband’s arm. She said to the
children.
“This is not something children
should see. Rika, take them to the shop immediately.”
Rika noticed Takashi
crouching down nearby. She took him and the girls to the shop.
“Thank you. Put the bag
down there,” Ikuyo said to the delivery man.
“Certainly,” he said and
glanced at the baby and left the factory.
Kayoko climbed down the
ladder and reached the floor. Hisakichi followed her with the baby in his arm
and stood beside her. Kayoko looked away from it and felt like throwing up.
Hisakichi walked to the
vat-washing area in the corner of the factory and began to wash the baby, while
Kayoko and Ikuyo stared at it. Suddenly, Kayoko cried hysterically:
“That’s Noboru! That’s
Noboru!”
Ikuyo’s eyes opened wide;
her face turned pale; and her hands trembled.
“Yes. It’s Noboru…,” she
mumbled and collapsed.
The baby was not rotten or
damaged much probably because it was held in the salty liquid, although his
body skin had shriveled like an elephant’s.
The news spread in an
instant all over the village. The police dug Noboru’s grave witnessed by the
Shorin-ji Temple priest, Hisakichi, and Ikuyo. They found the grave empty.
Apparently it had been dug up by someone before.
Who dug it? And who put the
baby in the vat? Hisakichi was under suspicion. Who else could have removed the
dead body and put it in the vat except Hisakichi? He and Ikuyo were the only
persons who were able to go into the factory without being seen. Hisakichi was
incensed.
“I am the victim! My
beloved son was dug out and thrown into the moromi. How horrible! Someone had a
grudge against me, but I have not done anything wrong to anyone,” he said.
Someone attested that he
had seen Hisakichi walking toward the graveyard with a shovel in his hand in
the middle of night. The police investigated the factory and found the shovel. A
small part of the shovel was dirty with the soil which was identical with the
soil of the graveyard.
the last part
“That couldn’t
be me! Someone must have used my shovel without my permission,” Hisakichi said.
Another villager
testified that he had seen Hisakichi walking toward his house with a big
furoshiki bag in his arms in the middle of the night. The police searched his
house and factory for the furoshiki and found a muddy one in a trash box in the
factory. The soil attached to it was the same as the soil in the graveyard. Furthermore, the police found that a pair of his work trousers had
the same soil on them as well.
Hisakichi was
arrested for the grave robbery and tampering with the corpse. About an hour later,
he confessed the crime.
“Why did you do
such a bizarre thing?” the investigator said in the interrogation room.
“An obsession. I
had long been obsessed that I had to win the first prize in the shoyu completion.
My great-grandfather, grandfather, and father had won the first prize in the
Gifu Shoyu Contest.”
“I know. It’s
Kikusui Shoyu, isn’t it? My family uses it,” the investigator said.
“Thank you. So,
if I do not win the prize, I can’t face my ancestors when I die. I had been
working hard to win the prize for the past three years. Every year I thought, ‘This
year, I will win the prize.’”
The investigator
kept listening without interruption.
“But, to my dismay
I failed three consecutive times. I was desperate. One day I thought Chuemon
might have written the secret of making tasty shoyu in some of his documents.”
“Chuemon?”
“That’s my great
grandfather, the founder of Shimizu-ya Shop. So I read all his books including
charge-sale books, purchase books, and account books.”
“They must be
very old. How were they kept intact for such a long time?”
“All my
ancestors’ documents have been carefully kept in tin boxes.”
“I see.”
“But, I found nothing
special in any page. I almost gave up, when I found a strange page in the
purchase books. I found some animals’ names in it, such as deer, bears, and bores.
Don’t you think it strange? Why were such animals necessary to make tasty
shoyu?”
“Yes, it’s
strange,” the investigator said.
“So, I read
several books of shoyu-making books my ancestors had kept. I even went to the
library. Then, I found ‘hishio’ in “Seimin Yojyutsu,” which was written during
the Han dynasty in China.”
“Hishio?”
“Yes, hishio is
the liquid that comes from the salted meat of animals like dogs, bears, or
monkeys.”
“But, why were
the animal names written in his purchase book?” the investigator said.
“Probably, Chuemon
put the meat of animals, not in salty water, but in the moromi liquid.”
“Moromi?”
“That’s the
basic ingredient for making shoyu. It consists of water, salt, boiled soybean,
and rice malt. Moromi produces shoyu after a year or so. Chuemon may have
soaked the various kinds of meat in the moromi and chose the meat that produced
the tastiest shoyu for the contest.”
“And did he find
the best meat?”
“I don’t know.
He didn’t record it.”
“I see, but does
this ‘hishio’ have something to do with your dead baby?” the investigator said.
Hisakichi momentarily
hesitated.
“Yes, it does. I
happened to read a dreadful sentence in one of the Chinese cookery books.”
“A dreadful
sentence?”
“Yes, they salted
human flesh instead of meat to make hishio.”
“My goodness!”
“I was horrified.
When a young criminal was executed in ancient China, his body was minced and
salted.”
“Really?”
“Yes, the liquid
made from salted flesh was the tastiest condiment according to the book. Empress
Yank Kwei Fei during the Tang Dynasty loved to use the hisiho made from baby’s
flesh to keep her beautiful skin. She ate pork and steak after seasoning them
with the hishio. Do you know her favorite fruit?”
“Yes, she was
fond of litchees,” the investigator said.
“She ate litchees
to refresh her mouth after eating meat seasoned with baby hishio.”
“I can’t believe
it. Is it true?”
“Yes, what I
have said is written in “Shokufu.” It was published during the Tang Dynasty.”
Hisakichi said.
“That’s why you
also….”
“Yes, first, I
thought it was so horrible that I couldn’t make such dreadful hishio. But when
I re-read Chuemon’s purchase books one page after another carefully, I found the
word ‘baby’ messily written in the margin of a page. I thought he might have
thought of soaking a baby in the moromi.”
“I see,” the
investigator said.
“He may have
used a baby or not, I don’t know, but I’m sure he might have used some kind of
meat to produce the best shoyu. I think the secret had been handed down from my
grandfather to my father, but not to me, because my father died when I was only
10 years old.
“When
Noboru died, I thought of the most atrocious thing. I was horrified to know
that the Devil was in me. I threw that thought out immediately. But when I came
back home from my son’s burial, the Devil whispered to me, ‘Dig him out. Dig
him out. This is the chance to make a baby’s hishio.’ At the same time I heard
another voice, ‘You are a brute. How dare you…?’ The Devil again whispered, ‘Chuemon
did it. You should do it, too. This is a chance in a million. An unrepeatable
chance.’ After I went to bed, my brain was split apart by the Devil and my
conscience. Soon I heard Noboru’s voice in my dream or through a hallucination.
He said, ‘Father, I am the fifth Shimizu-ya Shop owner. I am ready to sacrifice
my body for the benefit of the shop. I plead you to use my body. I plead you.’
Soon I found myself walking to the graveyard with a shovel in my hand.
“I brought his
corpse to the factory, washed it, and stood in front of a vat. I had to slice
his body to make the hishio, but I didn’t have the guts to do so. I thought if
I soaked his whole body in the moromi, his body’s liquids would gradually come
out. So, I climbed the ladder, stood on the plank with his body, and said to
him, ‘Forgive me’ as I soaked his body in the moromi.”
Hisakichi
breathed deeply. He looked as if he had released a heavy load off his chest.
“Then, a year
and half later, I won the first prize. I said to Noboru, ‘You did a good job!
You are a great fifth generation Shimizu-ya Shop owner.’ I was half pleased and
half bewildered. What would Chuemon say? Would he praise me or would he disdain
me?
“Kikusui Shoyu
sold like hot cakes. The customers said, ‘I have never tasted such good shoyu,’
‘I can’t describe its superb taste,’ ‘Such mild smell.’ If they know it was
made from a baby’s hisiho, I’m sure they will vomit. Their taste was misguided
by the label of the first prize.”
“Well, Shimizu-ya Shop, which has lasted
for four, no, five generations, will be over now. But I do not regret it. If I
weren’t arrested, I would have had to look for another victim. After all….”
Hisakichi
paused.
“After all?” the
investigator repeated.
“A human-being
is fragile. If his aim in life is to win the first prize, that’s the end of his
life.”
Hisakichi weakly
laughed at himself, at human-beings, scornfully.
The End
