Free The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama Page A

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    Tanaka slid open the door to the now silent
keikoba
and stepped onto the dirt floor of the training area. It was already six in the morning, late by training standards. Ordinarily, it would have been a flurry of activity. The youngest and lowest-ranked wrestlers, wearing their dark-colored canvas
mawashi
belts, would already have been exercising for an hour and a half. Each boy came to the stable as young as thirteen with the unrealistic dream of becoming a
yokozuna
, but only a minuscule percentage of
sumotori
ever reached the status of grand champion. Most would never even reach the halfway mark, that of the Juryo Division, which meant they would finally graduate from the apprentice stage and be considered
sekitori
, or professional wrestlers, who received a monthly salary from the sumo association. Still, Tanaka hoped to provide the inspiration to make them work harder. By eight o’clock in the morning, the higher-ranked wrestlers in their white
mawashi
belts would enter the
keikoba
for practice.
    Tanaka was careful not to disturb the
dohyo
, outlined in white. Many of the
rikishi
were just boys when they arrived at the stable, their first time away from home, just as he had been so many years ago. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure up the activity that once flourished every morning in the now quiet room—the smack of flesh against flesh, the low grunts of the
rikishi
at their morning stretches,and the sound of his irritated voice when a boy moved without thinking. “Not just your body. All your senses must be alert to your opponent. No move should ever be wasted!” Tanaka remembered the stinging blows of his own coach’s bamboo stick across his back and legs when he was a young
rikishi
. No mistake went unrewarded, leaving a raised welt for days. As
oyakata
, he refused to beat his
rikishi
, hoping their pride and desire to win would be enough, knowing that sometimes it wasn’t. Tanaka shook his head, remembering. It was a shame about the Matsumoto boy. Hiroshi—Matsuda-san’s protégé—whom he was finally persuaded to visit at the school, never had the chance to enter the stable because of the war. His talent and speed were evident, and there was something about the lightness with which the boy moved that reminded Tanaka of all the best wrestlers. It didn’t happen often; not once in the past few years had he felt in his bones that a boy’s raw talent could be shaped into a champion.
    “Otosan,”
a small voice rang out.
    Tanaka turned to see his younger daughter, Aki, standing in the doorway. “What are you doing up so early, Aki-chan?”
    “I heard you get up,” she said.
    He smiled and bent to pick her up. His older daughter, Haru, always more independent, was past the age of wanting to be carried. He was amazed at how light and fragile Aki felt in his arms, how soft and delicate her pale skin was against his fingers. She was the child they almost lost, sickly and small as a baby; twice she had soaring temperatures that made her skin turn a rosy pink, burning up from within. She was still so tiny. They held vigil at the hospital, and he and Noriko lit incense and prayed to the gods at a small temple down the street. Day and night, the murmuring chants had filled him with a heavy grief. Then days later, her fever broke and Aki had been healthy ever since, though always frail in his eyes. Even now, he couldn’t smell the pungent, sweet incense or hear the low rumble of chanting without a shiver passing through his body.
    “Where are the big boys?” she whispered into his ear, then pulled away and cupped her small palms against the scratchy black stubble on his cheeks.
    “They’ve gone for a little while.”
    “Will they be back?” she asked.
    The
rikishi
treated his family with the greatest respect, and Noriko had made a special effort to get to know each boy when he entered the stable. To Tanaka, sumo was more than sport and years of hard training. Sumo was family. Sumo was history.