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    Tales of Old Japanese
    Tales of Old Japanese
    Tales of Old Japanese
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    Tales of Old Japanese

    By Hugh Ashton

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    About this ebook

    Tales of Old Japanese is a collection of five short stories of the older generation living in contemporary Japan. The author spent over 25 years living in the country, working as a writer and journalist. Some of his impressions of Japan and of the people who live there have been recorded in:
    Keiko's House: An old house, its history, and the history of those who have lived there in the past.
    Haircuts: When 92-year-old Mr Kato changes his barber, his life takes on a surprising new meaning.
    Click: One photograph every day. The memories of twenty years, all neatly arranged in albums. Mrs Terada's camera sees everything.
    Mrs Sakamoto's Grouse: When Mrs Sakamoto sees a new brand of whisky on the shelves of her local neighbourhood shop, the result is unexpected.
    The Old House: Two boys play in the garden of a deserted house once owned by a notorious miser; which turns out not to be deserted after all.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisherj-views Publishing
    Release dateMar 2, 2018
    ISBN9781912605217
    Tales of Old Japanese
    Author

    Hugh Ashton

    Hugh Ashton was born in the UK in 1956, and after graduation from university worked in the technology industry around Cambridge (the first personal computer he used was Sir Clive Sinclair’s personal TRS-80) until 1988, when a long-standing interest in the country took him to Japan.There he worked for a Japanese company producing documentation for electronic instruments and high-end professional audio equipment, helped to set up the infrastructure for Japan’s first public Internet service provider, worked for major international finance houses, and worked on various writing projects, including interviewing figures in the business and scientific fields, and creating advertorial reports for Japanese corporations to be reprinted in international business magazines.Along the way, he met and married Yoshiko, and also gained certificates in tea ceremony and iaidō (the art of drawing a sword quickly).In 2008, he wrote and self-published his first published novel, Beneath Gray Skies, an alternative history in which the American Civil War was never fought, and the independent Confederacy forms an alliance with the German National Socialist party. This was followed by At the Sharpe End, a techno-financial-thriller set in Japan at the time of the Lehman’s crash, and Red Wheels Turning, which re-introduced Brian Finch-Malloy, the hero of Beneath Gray Skies, referred to by one reviewer as “a 1920s James Bond”.In 2012, Inknbeans Press of California published his first collection of Sherlock Holmes adventures, Tales from the Deed Box of John H. Watson M.D., which was swiftly followed by many other volumes of Holmes’ adventures, hailed by Sherlockians round the world as being true to the style and the spirit of the originals by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Inknbeans also published Tales of Old Japanese and other books by Ashton, including the Sherlock Ferret series of detective adventures for children. He and Yoshiko returned to the UK in 2016 for family reasons, where they now live in the Midlands cathedral city of Lichfield.In December 2017, Inknbeans Press ceased to be, following the sudden death of the proprietor, chief editor and leading light. Since that time, Ashton has reclaimed the copyright of his work, and has republished it in ebook and paper editions, along with the work of several other former Inknbeans authors.He continues to write Sherlock Holmes stories, as well as various other fiction and non-fiction projects, including documentation for forensic software, and editing and layout work on a freelance basis, in between studying for an MSc in forensic psychological studies with the Open University.

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      Book preview

      Tales of Old Japanese - Hugh Ashton

      Tales of Old Japanese

      Tales of Old Japanese

      Hugh Ashton

      Nikki McBroom (illustrations)

      j-views Publishing

      Contents

      Preface

      Keiko’s House

      Haircuts

      Click

      Mrs Sakamoto’s Grouse

      The Old House

      If you enjoyed this book…

      Also by Hugh Ashton

      About the Author

      Tales of Old Japanese

      Hugh Ashton

      Published by j-views Publishing, 2018

      © 2012 Hugh Ashton

      All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are written in respectful tribute to the creator of the principal characters.

      ISBN: 978-1-912605-21-7

      Created with Vellum

      I would like to dedicate these stories to the following:

      To Kiyoshi and Kikuno Nishio, my parents-in-law, sadly no longer with us, who provided a link to Japan’s past. I felt very privileged to be living in your house which you loved so much.

      To all the people of Japan, and especially those of Tohoku who were hit by the triple disaster of March 11, 2011. Your courage and gaman served as an inspiration, not just to me, but to all those non-Japanese living in this country, and to the whole world.

      To Inknbeans Press, and to the memory of Jo, who helped shape these stories into their final form.

      To Nikki McBroom who has translated my words into images so skilfully.

      And to my wife, Yoshiko, whose loving patience makes it possible for me to write these stories.

      Preface

      These stories celebrate the histories, the lives, and the quirks of older people living in Japan, a country where I have spent the past twenty-four years. For those of you who know Japan as either an over-industrialised nation with smokestacks and pollution, inhabited by blue-suited white-shirted worker ants, or as a country of youth-oriented manga and anime cartoons where everyone dresses like a superhero, or even as a geisha and cherry blossom land, the stories in this book may come as something of a surprise.

      Once you move out of Tokyo and you live in the suburbs, life becomes slower, and there is time to observe the people around you. As you get to know them, you realise that there is a wealth of history out there, and sometimes some painful memories are hidden behind the smiles. These stories are all based around the older people in my neighbourhood whom I have come to know. None of these, of course, is a recognisable portrait of any one individual, but they all have some basis in the characters and the places around me.

      Keiko’s House and Haircuts both reflect the events of the Pacific War (which we call the Second World War) and the effect it had on some Japanese people. Especially for those readers who live in North America, it may be hard to imagine the devastation caused by the fire-bombings of Japanese cities, and the heartbreak that was caused by this destruction. Some of the events in Keiko’s House actually occurred, and some are pieced together from what I have learned from those who lived through those times. For those who served Japan abroad in the Imperial Army or Navy, the war brought its own memories, and some of these are imagined in Haircuts.

      When Japanese people take up a hobby or an interest, they are typically whole-hearted and enthusiastic about it. Such enthusiasm bordering on obsession, in this case for photography, forms the basis for Click, and to a certain extent for Mrs Sakamoto’s Grouse, though the latter also deals with affection and loss.

      Lastly, a good old-fashioned ghost story to end the collection, based around an old house that used to stand near where we live now. The Old House actually existed, though as far as I know it was never haunted.

      All these stories except Click had their first airing at a writers’ group which met in Ben’s Café in Takadanobaba (unhappily now defunct) run by Yoshiko Toyama, whenever there was a fifth Sunday in the month, and writers in English used to assemble and read their latest works to each other. The Old House was written for a Halloween which happened to be such a fifth Sunday.

      Hugh Ashton

      Kamakura, March 2012

      Keiko’s House

      Author’s note

      When I originally wrote this, I deliberately wrote it without punctuation to mark off speech and thoughts, as I wanted to convey the kind of dream-state where the line between reality and imagination becomes blurred that is so easy to enter in the hot Japanese summer.

      There he was again. Sitting on the Matsuokas’ garden wall by the roadside. Keiko had seen him hanging round the area for the past few weeks, but she still hadn’t told anyone about him. He looked old, maybe eighty or so, about twenty years older than Keiko, but still fit. He must have been a tall man once, she guessed, but now age had bent him and he stooped awkwardly. One arm always seemed to be hanging stiffly by his side – she’d once noticed him fishing a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his scruffy stained blazer, extracting a cigarette and lighting

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