Big Snake the Hunt for the Worlds Larges by Robert Twigger

Author:Robert Twigger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Travel
ISBN: 9780753808573
Publisher: Orion Books
Published: 1999-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Punch-Up at a Funeral

‘Ther are three things that concern the loyal servant The Master’s will, his own vitality and the condition of his death.’

From the seventeenth-century Samurai manual Hagakure

I passed Kancho’s lamppost on the way to the station. Perhaps in years to come a plaque should be fixed to it to celebrate the life of a great martial artist. Though he travelled widely in his life he was born, in 1916, in this, the same area where he died seventy-nine years later. His father was a wealthy doctor and built a judo dojo at their house for local people to practise in. It was called the Yoshinkan dojo, which meant ‘the place of cultivating spirit’.

Kancho liked the family touch, so when he set up his own dojo and started to teach police and civilians the deadly arts he knew, he continued using the Yoshinkan name. For nearly four decades he had taught, and now that he was dead no one really knew who would take over the mantle of master. Kancho had left no clear orders, so a power struggle was lining up, principally between Chida Sensei and Kancho’s son, Shioda junior. At the funeral I knew that the top teachers would present a unified front to the world, but afterwards it was rumoured the dojo might be split into two factions.

It was a hot day for a funeral: ‘34° C’ flashed the neon digital thermometer on a tower building next to the station, and it was still only 9.00 a.m. My regulation black suit was wool, and already harboured pints of perspiration in the soggy lining of the underarms. I was sweating so much I decided it would be pointless to take my jacket off – why reveal my discomfort?

From the station to the funeral shrine schoolboys in traditional long black coats with Prussian collars and armbands stood every few yards to direct the constant stream of mourners. The foreign senshusei got into a huddle in front of the Shinto shrine to await instructions. The shrine was a huge gravelled area filled with pagoda-style outbuildings and one big ornate wooden building where the final respects were to be paid. There was money to be paid too; for the senshusei it was computed at two thousand yen each, higher earners would be expected to pay more. The midget disciple, Fujitomi, swamped in an outsize black suit, directed us to a cluster of white tents where the money was being collected. The cops had been drafted in to be funeral ushers. They wore their suits and were under orders from Oyamada. The foreign senshusei were without duties; when push came to shove they didn’t want a bunch of gaijin messing things up. In Japan misunderstandings are feared more than anything; excluding foreigners is not done out of dislike, it is done out of a pathological fear of a misunderstanding developing, and an overactive imagination about the consequences of such a misunderstanding.

I calculated that a funeral was at least cheaper than a wedding.

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