On the Banks of Muddy Waters: Ayako Miura’s Soulful Adaptation of the Story of Job

Appendix I: A synopsis

Deiryū Chitai is centered on four main characters, two men and two women who are on their way to becoming united as two couples (see Table 1). They are all initially school children who reach young adulthood as the story progresses; all but one come from poor farming households. Takuichi and his younger brother Kōsaku belong to the same household, with the surname Ishimura (lit. stone village),^[46] which also includes grandparents and two sisters. Takuichi maintains an enduring romantic affection for Fukuko, who grew up in the same village but was sold into prostitution by her father to pay off a gambling debt. Setsuko, a daughter of the wealthy owner of Fukuko’s brothel in a town some distance away, develops a growing romantic affection for Kōsaku, who slowly and reluctantly begins to reciprocate.

Appendix Table 1: Four main characters of Deiryū Chitai

Part 1: The story begins with a tenant farming household outside the town of Kamifurano, bearing the surname Ishimura, whose first-generation settlers had migrated from Fukushima a little over 20 years previously. The family consists of six individuals: grandparents (Ichisaburō, 58 years old; Kiwa, 55 years old), two brothers (Takuichi, 13 years; Kōsaku, 10 years), and two sisters (Tomi, 15 years; Yoshiko, 6 years) (see Table 2). The father, Gihei, died four years prior, in an accident at the age of thirty-two; while the widowed mother, Sae, is absent from the scene. She is under apprenticeship to become a hairdresser in a faraway city on the island, the remote cities in question are successively identified as Sapporo, Otaru, and Hakodate (see Figure 1). Hakodate, the farthest city of the three, is a full day’s journey by train, a distance that is almost prohibitively expensive for their meager income. The children have not seen their mother for two years; the sisters will not get to see her at all before they lose their lives in a mudslide nine years after the story’s beginning. The brothers’ once-in-a-lifetime journey to Hakodate in the seventh year of separation is frustrated by an untimely avalanche. The mother’s anticipated return after 11 years of absence takes place just days after the mudslide has claimed the lives of both her daughters.

Appendix Table 2: Selected additional characters in Deiryū Chitai

Appendix Figure 1:

Hokkaido: Geographical Names that Appear in Deiryū Chitai.

The Ishimura household, struggling for survival to begin with, suffers a major setback when they lose Gihei to an accident in the prime of his life. Gihei’s widowed wife, Sae, is no longer present to be able to help. His father, Ichisaburō, is aging, and his mother, Kiwa, is sickly (Tomi, followed by Yoshiko, assumes much of the household work). The family’s poverty is such that they can rarely afford to eat polished rice. They work hard from early morning to sunset, growing oat predominantly for animal feed, and also some potatoes and green peas for home consumption. The children, from around the age of eight, work on the farm, with little time to play. During the winter months, they supplement their farm income by working on the nearby lumber yard (where Gihei lost his life). Ichisaburō is respected in the community for his wisdom, and considers it everyone’s duty to acquire education and thereby become useful to society. The children walk nearly four km each way to a little village schoolhouse. After six years of primary education, most village children commute to the town center of Kamifurano, more than four km away, for two more years of public education at the higher elementary school there. It is a foregone conclusion that, given their economic reality, eight years of public education, at most, is all Tomi and Takuichi can hope to obtain. Kōsaku, however, proves to be a gifted student, and his elementary school teacher encourages him to attend a five-year middle school in the city of Asahikawa some 40 km north.^[47]

Takuichi, our “Job” character, is devoted to helping his aging grandfather make a living. He is fond of Fukuko, a schoolmate three years younger, but she is sold into prostitution by her father to pay off his gambling debt while she is at higher elementary school. Takuichi’s lifetime goal becomes to liberate her from her life of servitude by saving money, while also pledging his financial support of Kōsaku’s desire for further education, a task almost beyond his financial reach. Tomi, the oldest, likewise keeps postponing her marriage to a man she loves in order to save the dowry to help with Kōsaku’s expected educational expenses. Kosaku, for his part, cannot bear to see his siblings sacrifice so much for his selfish ambition. He gives up attending middle school (even though he scores the highest on the entrance exam) so that Tomi can be married. Overriding a suggestion from his teacher, moreover, he even relinquishes attending a tuition-free normal school in Asahikawa upon finishing higher elementary school, as it would entail not being able to help with the farm.^[48]

Through arrangements made by a kind principal, who recognizes his promise as a teacher, upon graduation from higher elementary school Kōsaku becomes an assistant teacher and, bypassing normal school, begins to use his spare time to prepare for a national teacher licensing exam through self-study. As such, he now brings a steady flow of modest income into the household, sending a portion of his monthly pay to his mother in Hakodate, and materially improving the well-being of the Ishimura household. Kōsaku commutes from the countryside populated by struggling farmers to the town center inhabited by greedy men of commerce. Among these are Mr. Fukagi, a money lender who is also Fukuko’s brothel owner, and Fukuko’s rich clients who frequent the joint. Kōsaku is befriended by Setsuko, Mr. Fukagi’s daughter,who is one year his senior. Setsuko develops affection for Kōsaku but he remains apprehensive, given who her father is and the fact that they are from entirely different socioeconomic backgrounds. Setsuko proves her genuine devotion to Kōsaku by denouncing her father, turning down a marriage offer from a rich doctor, and getting away from her father for a short stint in Tokyo, where her brother attends school.

Just when the Ishimuras are beginning to enjoy a modest measure of prosperity, and are preparing for Sae’s return with great anticipation, there is a sudden increase in volcanic activity at Mt. Tokachi. One day, a large noise is heard from the direction of the mountain. Takuichi and Kōsaku, climbing up a steep hill to observe what is happening, see a mudflow rushing down the slope. Hearing the loud warning they issue, Ichisaburō, Kiwa, and Yoshiko flee out the house but not in time. Takuichi jumps into the mudslide in a perilous attempt to save them, saying to Kōsaku, “[p]lease take care of mother,” and disappears out of sight. Just then, Kōsaku hears the groaning of a woman trapped on the roadside, who, when rescued, turns out to be Fukuko, who was in the village visiting her dying father. The bodies of Ichisaburō and Yoshiko are about to be cremated on the third day, when Takuichi appears on horseback. Presumed dead, he was saved when trapped between the branches of a tree; he lay there unconscious until he was rescued by an elderly farmer from another village. The body of Kiwa is later found; they also learn that Tomi’s body has already been cremated. All in all, the mudslide has claimed the lives of 144 people in the farming villages, even though it skirted the center of Kamifurano. In the town center itself, no one is killed and no building destroyed.

Part 2: The story resumes as Takuichi sets out to rebuild a rice field by the railroad tracks some distance away. The family’s tenant farm is destroyed beyond any hope of repair, so he rents a farm from a landed farmer who had lost his wife and children in the mudslide and decided to move away to another part of Hokkaido. Rebuilding the farm would not only require removing volcanic rocks and fallen trees but also decontaminating the soil saturated with sulfur. Takuichi is fully aware that it may take years before a harvest can be expected. Sae, the mother, has returned from Hakodate, where, having fallen ill, she was living under the care of a Christian missionary from Australia. Teijirō Yoshida, a farmer who is also the mayor of Kamifurano; his wife; and their two school-age children enter the scene as kind neighbors. Barely 40 years old, Yoshida is a self-made man who leads a frugal lifestyle. His family has refused to receive any relief supplies, though they too are victims; they generously donate anything they can share with the less fortunate. Yoshida is also determined to rebuild the farmlands of Kamifurano, including by floating a municipal bond. This incurs stiff opposition from the town’s business community, led by Fukagi, who considers reconstruction futile and a waste of public funds. Fukagi, mobilizing opposition to the mayor, hires thugs to harass the mayor and his family. Takuichi, another vocal proponent of reconstruction of farmland, also becomes the target of harassment.

Much of the rest of the novel involves parallel and overlapping episodes developing on multiple fronts, including:

1. The manner in which the confrontation plays out between the proponents and opponents of agricultural reconstruction (in which Takuichi is severely injured by thugs and hospitalized for three months, leaving him partially maimed);

2. a growing romantic love between Kōsaku and Setsuko, who promise to remain “pure” (they do not physically touch each other, even once, in the story);

3. Takuichi’s painstaking and frustrating efforts to rebuild the farm, which lead to a successful harvest of rice at the end of the second season, in the autumn of 1928;

4. Kōsaku’s diligent and self-motivated study to prepare for a national teacher licensing exam, which he successfully passes in July 1928; and

5. the account of how Setsuko, after having severed her relationship with her father, begins to work for Dr. Jūhei Numazaki, a physician and Christian leader in Asahikawa, and, inspired by the legal opinion of Mrs. Fumiko Sano, a local leader of the Christian women’s temperance movement (engaged in the abolishment of licensed prostitution in Japan),^[49] conceives of a plan to free Fukuko from her father’s brothel.

The final pages of the novel narrate a suspenseful rescue of Fukuko from prostitution, set against the background of a nearing rice harvest, as Fukuko and Takuichi approach commitment to a marriage. Setsuko convinces Fukuko that the law does not allow a married woman to be employed by a brothel, nor does it allow any woman to be compelled to work as a prostitute to pay off her debts; the law stipulates that, when a woman has no will to work as a prostitute, any labor contract is null and void, though the debt contract may remain valid. Fukuko is reluctant, considering herself unqualified to love Takuichi and unwilling to burden him with her debt, but finally yields to Setsuko’s persistent persuasion. Setsuko confronts her father with Fukuko’s legal rights but finds him not only intransigent to release her but also even more determined to tighten his grip. Assured of an offer of protection from Dr. Numazaki, she decides to resort to subterfuge, telling the Ishimura brothers that, if successful, she will wave a white handkerchief through a window of an Asahikawa-bound train. One early morning, Takuichi and Kōsaku stand on the farm resplendent with growing rice stalks ready to be harvested, and anxiously wait for the first train of the day to pass by. The story ends as a white handkerchief is waved, and the train, with Fukuko onboard, chugs away into a distant land.

Appendix II: Selected Christian allusions in Deiryū Chitai