The Dream of Water by Kyoko Mori

Author:Kyoko Mori
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466876729
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

The Mansion of Broken Dishes

On the old express train, which took three hours from Kobe to Himeji with several stops, my mother, brother, and I ate sandwiches while comparing the shades of green outside the window: the dark green of the mountain ridge to the north, the gold tints mixed into the bamboo groves, the bright squares of paddies. The scenery has not changed much, but it whips past me in double time. The new express train stops only once, at Akashi, in front of the planetarium we visited on Sundays; there the large clock on the observation tower still points to Japanese Standard Time. “Every watch or clock in Japan has to agree with that one,” my mother used to say, flicking her wrist to see if hers did.

I am alone on the train because my aunt Keiko couldn’t meet me in Kobe as planned. She called me at seven and said, “I have to do something at my shrine first. I’ll be at Grandmother’s house in the afternoon. Don’t wait for me. She’s anxious to see you.”

As we approach Himeji, the countryside disappears and is replaced by factories and residential areas. The train begins to slow down. An announcement reminds us that this is our final stop, that we should be careful not to forget our luggage. I get off, cross the street to the bus terminal, and stand in line behind the sign for Yamasaki, the closest town to my grandmother’s village. Ten minutes later, the bus rolls in, still painted orange on a cream-colored background. I remember to choose a seat near the front to avoid getting motion sickness. The bus is only half full.

For the first twenty minutes, the bus keeps stopping and starting in the heavy downtown traffic. The drive is anything but smooth. My brother and I used to feel queasy here. As the traffic thins, we pass the Himeji Castle and then an old samurai mansion with a sign in front that says sara yashiki, “Mansion of the Plates.”

My mother told us the ghost story that made this mansion famous. Okiku, a maidservant here in feudal times, broke one of her master’s twenty heirloom plates and was beheaded by him. Rather than giving her a proper burial, he threw her body into a well. From then on, her ghost crawled up from the well on rainy nights. Amid the gusts of wind and rain, her master heard her counting the plates and weeping because no matter how many times she counted, one was always missing. This story didn’t make sense to me. Okiku’s punishment reminded me of having to stay after school to make up some work I didn’t do right—like memorizing the multiplication table or converting fractions into decimals. “Your story is unfair,” I told my mother. “Poor Okiku had to count the plates even after she was dead. Her master only had to listen. I thought he was the villain. He should have had to do the counting every night.” My mother laughed and said, “This was supposed to be a ghost story, not a joke.

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