Free The Izu Dancer and Other Stories: The Counterfeiter, Obasute, The Full Moon by Kawabata Yasunari, Yasushi Inoue

appears that he was regarded more affectionately as "Uncle Hosen" by the people in other villages than by those in this one.
Hosen's death came suddenly. Early one morning when the autumn rain had been pouring down continuously, his next door neighbor, who actually lived a full block away, became curious about the fact that "Uncle Hosen" had not shown up for two or three days, so he went over to visit him. Hosen was lying on his face in the doma, dead. When the neighbor tried touching him, it was obvious from the rigidity and coldness of the dead body that many hours had passed since his death. The cause of Hosen Hara's death was apoplexy.
An interesting thing in connection with Hosen's passing away was that just prior to his death he apparently had been intending to work with his paintbrushes. This could be deduced from the fact that in the storeroom there was a blanket, folded in two, on top of which a number of dishes for mixing paint had been arranged in order. Beside them, five paintbrushes had been placed with their necks neatly lined up on the cover of an inkstone case. Right in the middle of the blanket, a sheet of brand new white paper on which nothing had been painted was spread out just as neatly. It was thought that he had been just intending to take up his brush when he remembered something he had to attend to, had stepped down into the doma , and had passed away there just like that.
"Was Hosen-san painting pictures in his later years?" I asked Senzo Onoe.
"I don't think he was painting any more. But he was a painter at heart, so I guess it must have been on his mind, even when he had a hunch that he was going to die. Some people might say that he was going to paint, but he was missing three fingers, so it wouldn't have been easy to paint anything worth mentioning," he replied.
That was the last of the counterfeiter, but there was something in that story that struck me. Onoe had said that drawing paper without a single brush stroke on it had been spread out and ready, but I had the feeling that he really had no intention of painting a picture at that time. I felt rather that he only wanted to surround himself with his painting gear.
I listened to this tale of Hosen Hara to the end, and when I got up to leave, Senzo Onoe said, as though he had suddenly remembered something, "By the way, inside a cabinet in the storeroom of your house there are some things Uncle Hosen wrote. I think there's something he wrote about fireworks. Those things were found at the time of his funeral, and some of the young boys must have thought they might be of use some day and stored them in the Assembly Hall."
There was one cabinet in the storeroom of the house I had rented which we had not touched and had left alone as promised when I had leased the house. I didn't know what was in it but had guessed that it must contain things that were owned jointly by the young people of the village.
On returning home, I opened that cabinet. An account book of festival receipts, minutes of a youth conference, drafts of speeches—trash of that sort was crammed into it. In among these things, I discovered a notebook of bound Japanese rice-paper with the words Outline of Procedures Governing the Manufacture of Pyrotechnics skillfully written, by brush of course, on the cover. The title was pretentious, but these things appeared to be something like memoranda which Hosen Hara had written himself on the making of fireworks. When I opened up the notebook and looked at a page, there was a heading, "Fog Blooms; Red Fog; Snowfall," with this formula underneath:
"In order to make stars, prepare a saffron core and set it aside to dry; then add clay to chrysanthemum powder, * mix with water, add 1 1/2% magnesium, and stir in a mortar; wrap the resulting paste around the core in layers; after the core is well covered with the paste, sprinkle with a mixture made from 15 OZ. of chrysanthemum and oz. of seed. ** Roll the ball well and repeat this process several