Free The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama

The only man left teaching at his school was Hirano-sensei, whose withered right leg had kept him from being drafted, and who taught Hiroshi’s class. He was thin and pale, serious and soft-spoken, in his mid-thirties and fiercely loyal to the emperor. One morning, just six months after the Pacific War began, Hirano-sensei pointed to an enormous map of what had become the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, littered with small Japanese flags marking the recent Japanese victories in Guam, Hong Kong, Wake, Manila, Singapore, Bataan, and Rangoon. He lifted his pointer and explained where soldiers had landed in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Burma. “Our imperial forces have driven away all Western dominance, allowing for a stronger, greater East Asia.” He droned on excitedly about Japan’s successes for the rest of the morning.
    “I don’t think he likes women,” Mako leaned over and whispered to Hiroshi.
    “How would you know?” Hiroshi stifled a laugh.
    “Look at the way he moves, dragging that foot behind him, swinging his hips from side to side.”
    Hiroshi waited until Hirano-sensei turned around again. “You don’t need two good feet to like women,” he whispered back.
    “Just as long as something else down
there
works,” Mako said, laughing.
    Hiroshi shook his head at Mako and smiled. He hadn’t paid much attention in the classroom since the war began. After a morning assembly, their days were filled with fire drills and marching in formation. His sensei’s fervor for the war was carried over to their assignments of writing new slogans for each campaign. Their classroom walls were lined with phrases such as “Until victory is achieved, deny one’s self” or “The invincible imperial forces will walk the path of victory.” Most of the students made fun of Hirano-sensei behind his back, but Hiroshi understood how ashamed he must feel, teaching among women, unable to fight for his country. No wonder Hirano-sensei couldn’t stop talking about the war; living his nation’s victories made them his, if only through words.
Family
    As was his habit, forty-year-old Sho Tanaka rose early, careful not to wake his wife, Noriko, as he slipped quietly through the house. Down the hall, his daughters, five-year-old Aki and eight-year-old Haru, still slept. Not until he slid shut the door to their living quarters and walked across the courtyard did he resume his regular stride. His tight muscles awakened as he quickened his step, and he remembered how it felt to work his body beyond endurance. He breathed in the mildness of the early June morning.
    Sometimes, in the thirty feet from his house to the sumo stable, he could almost make himself believe that the war hadn’t changed anything. But when he entered the stable through the side door, he found the building eerily quiet. Six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, most sumo stables had closed. The fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys were sent to work in munitions and aircraft factories, and most of the low-level
rikishi
over eighteen were drafted to fight for their emperor. But Yokozuna Futabayama was still the reigning champion, and with only a handful of top-ranked wrestlers left, including Kitoyama, the Katsuyama-beya hadn’t been completely shut down.And with Kitoyama’s continual victories came the assurance that he wouldn’t be called to fight.
    Now, Sho Tanaka’s main concern was Noriko and the girls, and keeping their lives as close to normal as he could. He had always dreamed of one day telling his own sons of the honor and greatness that came from sumo. Instead, Noriko had borne him two daughters, Haru and Aki, whose names meant “spring” and “fall”; and far from being discontent, he loved his daughters for their beauty and the lightness of their movements, so different from the sturdy rowdiness of the boys he worked with every day. It was true that at first they hadn’t been the sons he had wished for, but he came to treasure them