There were several kamishibai men at this party, as well as Koji Kada, one of the main painters for the theater. Misao Naito pulled out a harmonica and played for us, after which he gave a humorous speech. A natural performer, he was eager to entertain, and did so with ease. The others competed in their own ways—men in their seventies, all with that warm talkative quality peculiar to successful festival merchants.
A few weeks later, Mr. Naito gave his first performance in thirty years at the Katsushika Techno-Plaza. Mr. Naito's appeal was obvious from the start in his smile, his gruff voice, his ease and shine with the audience. But we were indoors, the children were used to TV, and a microphone was in full squeak. It was a complicated story, Golden Bat, about the war—one of the few original picture sets that had not been lost.
During the performance the adults recalled those afternoons when they had sat on the ground, chewed on candy, and puzzled over quizzes while watching this theater. It had been their sole entertainment after school—they had had no cram schools, no TV, no computer games. If they could bite a pink rice cracker into a certain animal figure, they would get a prize; if they could crack the quiz they would win free candy. Some thirty years had passed, but the parents at the Techno-Plaza were playing with the old toys and eating candy, enraptured. Their kids stood nearby with bored-looking expressions.
Today, there is still one kamishibai man working in Tokyo. He appears occasionally near the Nippori JR Station. He is worth searching for because he is the last chance to see the real thing. He works outside, regaling his audiences in the traditional way, without microphones, electric lights, or other modern paraphernalia.
Potato Vendors
Do you know the night ramen vendor's distinctive three-toned whistle? How about the knife sharpener's or the bamboo seller's special calls? Or the tofu man's whistle? They can still be heard in Tokyo's shitamachi (old, working-class neighborhoods). Certainly one call that everyone can recognize is the yakiimo man's. If you're lucky, you'll hear it coming from a cart pushed along the street and not from one of those trucks that fume up our environment. Who are these men who brave the cold to sell us those delicious potatoes? What do they do from late March to November when the season is over? Their life is not easy, and their tradition continues from centuries ago.
Monouri, or street vendors, were at work in the Heian Period (794-1185) although it wasn't until the Muromachi Period (fourteenth century) that they became a vital part of the economic system. They not only sold food, tools, toys, medicine, and small things for daily use, but some also bought used articles such as old clothes, umbrellas, and metal, and still others served as repairmen for knives, clogs, and the like. Some monouri specialized in seasonal goods such as decorations for the New Year, irises for Boy's Day, goldfish for summer, lanterns for Obon, and insects for children in the summer.
The life of the monouri was a hard one. During the Edo Period (1603-1868) selling became desperately competitive, and vendors began to don exotic costumes, use amusing and attention-getting calls, and even perform engaging antics in order to attract business.
The tojiname uri, for instance, who sold candies to children, wore Chinese clothes and a Chinese hat. He played a flute and drum, and delighted his young audience with dancing whenever he made a sale. The takarabune uri, active until the mid-Meiji Era, sold prints of the Seven Lucky Gods (shichifukujin) that you see here and there every New Year. People slept with these prints under their pillows to induce a lucky dream for the year. Soba vendors hung furin (chimes) on the carriers worn on their backs and jangled their way along the narrow streets. It must have been a noisy city even without the help of motorcycles and loudspeakers.
Although yakiimo (baked sweet potatoes) were popular in the Edo Period, they were sold only in stores—probably due to fire laws. Only boiled and steamed potatoes were sold by the street vendors. Today, in shitamachi, yakiimo are baked in pebbles that are heated by a wood-burning stove in the bottom of a wooden cart. Once fully cooked (after about one hour), they are raked out of the pebbles and placed in the adjacent warming compartment until they are sold.
My favorite yakiimo man, Mr. Nagao, is from Aomori. I came to know him because of his call. A veteran minyo and enka (traditional Japanese styles of singing) performer, his call is a distinct and beautiful distraction among the confusion of everyday noise. He is one of twelve men who are under his oyakata (boss) in the Ueno area. He says there are about ten bosses in Tokyo now, and each is in charge of a certain area. Mr. Nagao has been working my street for twenty winters. He sleeps in a nearby six-mat room that he shares with two older yakiimo men in their seventies, also from the Tohoku district.
Mr. Nagao is a rice farmer. After the harvest at the end of October, he comes to Tokyo to work until the end of March while his rice paddies are under snow. He sells sweet potatoes from 10:00 A.M. until 9 or 10:00 P.M., six days a week. He cooks for himself in his small room and, occasionally, goes out for drinks and karaoke at a local bar. Being away from home and eating the limited menu that he cooks are the hardest parts of his job, he says.
Just as in the Edo Period, he must rent his cart (2,500 yen a month) and buy potatoes (9,000 yen per 40 kilograms) from his oyakata. Things are tight now. As recently as 1981, he sometimes sold 100 kilograms of potatoes per day, but now he is lucky if he sells 20. At about 600 yen per kilogram, this doesn't leave much to take home after rent, food, and expenses. His most frequent customers, he says, are middle-aged women, and the best time of day for business is 3:00 P.M. The tall, noiseproof new buildings and the popularity of Western-style candy have reduced his sales.
At the end of last year he wasn't sure whether it would be worth his while to come again this season. So, one day in late October when we heard his distinctive cry, we smiled, knowing he was back. Whether he'll be back again next year is another question. Have you had a yakiimo lately?
Pipe Cleaners
Tobacco made its way to Japan from America via the Portuguese and Spaniards at the end of the sixteenth century. It was extolled for its medicinal properties-. "If a sick man tastes this smoke he is restored to glowing health," wrote Prince Toshihito in 1609. Times have changed for tobacco. And so have the ways of smoking it.
Cigars appear to have come first. The record is sketchy, but soon a long thin pipe called a kiseru became de rigueur for men and women of all strata in Japan, despite sporadic and futile government intervention.
Among other things, smoking was thought to help fix the black color that married women applied to their teeth, giving the kiseru allure as an odd sort of beauty aid. Shopkeepers smoked kiseru with flat mouthpieces that teeth could clamp down on to free hands for business; the samurai's was thin and elegant; the sumo wrestler's huge; the actor's distinctive and easily recognized. At one point some townspeople brandished heavy, studded kiseru called "squabble pipes" as substitutes for the swords they were not permitted to carry.
Materials for the bowl and mouthpiece of the kiseru included ceramics, stone, ivory, silver, and gold, but copper was the most prevalent. These ends were joined by a stem of bamboo. Raoya, the name for men who clean and refit the bamboo, bowl, and mouthpiece of kiseru, comes from the word for Laos, where this bamboo was originally from. Kiseru is a Cambodian word. Just why such a word came to be used for Japanese pipes remains unclear.
Tomeshiro