SILVER  FIFTY-SEN  PIECES

 

 

Part  One

It was customary for the two-yen allowance Yoshiko received at the beginning of the month to be put into her coin purse, in silver fifty-sen pieces, by her mother’s own hand.

The fifty-sen piece, at that time, had been re-issued as a smaller coin.  The new silver coins, which appeared light but felt heavy, seemed to Yoshiko to pack her little red leather coin purse with splendid majesty.  Careful not to use up her allowance, she often kept the fifty-sen silver coins in her coin purse, inside her handbag, until the end of the month.

Yoshiko did not shun the usual girlish pleasures such as going with her friends from work to see movies or to coffee shops; it was just that she ignored things that did not fit into her life.  She had never experienced such pleasures, and therefore was not attracted by them.

Once a week, on her way home from work, she would drop by the department store and purchase a ten-sen loaf of the salted stick-bread she liked so much, but other than that Yoshiko was not one to spend money on herself particularly.

One day, however, in the stationery department at Mitsukoshi, a glass paperweight caught her eye.  It was hexagonal, with a dog etched in relief.  Finding the dog cute, she impulsively took the paperweight in her hand; its sharp chill and unexpected weight gave it a refreshing feel.  Ever fond of such clever and intricate handicraft, Yoshiko was helplessly captivated.  For a long while she hefted it on her palm and looked at it from every angle, then, reluctantly, she gently returned it to its box.  It was forty sen.

She came again the following day.  She scrutinized the paperweight in the same way.  And she came again the day after that and looked at it.  After ten days of this, she finally made up her mind, and when she said, “I’ll take this,” it was with a leaping heart.

When she got home with it, her mother and elder sister laughed.  “You bought such a toy?”  But while taking it in their hands and looking it over, they began saying, “You’re right, it’s made rather well,” and, “It’s a clever piece of workmanship.”  They held it up to a light, and otherwise admired it.

The polished glass surface and the frosted-glass-like etched surfaces of the relief were in delicate harmony.  Even the facets of the hexagon presented an exquisite rhythm.  And to Yoshiko the paperweight was a beautiful work of art.

Having taken seven or eight days to make sure that it was worth having, Yoshiko was unconcerned with what anyone might say, but having her mother and sister approve elated her.

Even if people should laugh at her for going so far as to take nearly ten days to buy something costing only forty sen, Yoshiko would not have been satisfied unless she had done so.  She had never experienced regret over having purchased something on impulse.  It was not that the seventeen-year-old Yoshiko was possessed of such discretion that she would look things over and ponder them for days until ascertaining their value.  But she was apprehensive of imprudently using the money, which she had come to regard as precious.

Several years later when the story of the paperweight came up and everyone had heartily laughed, her mother said earnestly, “I thought you were really lovable back then.”

To each and every one of Yoshiko’s possessions attached an amusing anecdote of this sort.

 

Part  Two

It being convenient for them to do their shopping from the top floor down, they would begin by taking the elevator up to the fifth floor.  On Sunday, taking advantage of the unusual opportunity to go shopping with her mother, Yoshiko had come to Mitsukoshi.

Although the day’s shopping was done and they had come down to the first floor, her mother, as though it were a matter of course, went to the bargain basement.

“It’s so crowded, Mother.  It’s awful,” grumbled Yoshiko; but her mother could not hear, for evidently the competitive spirit of the bargain counters had come over her.

The bargain counters were designed to make people waste their money, but how will my mother fare, thought Yoshiko, following at a distance with a mind to watching her mother.  The air conditioner was going, and it was not all that hot.

First she bought three twenty-five-sen writing tablets and looked back to Yoshiko; the two of them smiled sweetly.  Recently her mother had made frequent use of Yoshiko’s stationery, and Yoshiko had complained, so their exchanged glances were saying, Well, this makes it all right.

Drawn toward the unmobbed kitchen-utensils or undergarments counters, Yoshiko’s mother was not bold enough to push people aside; instead she would tiptoe up and peer, or put her hand between the sleeves of people in front.  But having failed to purchase a thing, she set her feet for the exit, seeming as if dissatisfied, as if it were wrong to give up.

“My goodness, this is ninety-five sen?  How about that…,” said her mother at the exit, grabbing a ten-spoked umbrella.  Rummaging through the heap of ten-spoked umbrellas, each and every one of which bore a ninety-five-sen price tag on it, her mother was truly amazed.

“They’re a good buy, aren’t they, Yoshiko?  Aren’t they a good buy?” she said, suddenly spirited.  It looked like her troubled heart had found relief.

“Well, don’t you think they’re a good buy?”

“They sure are,” replied Yoshiko, also taking one in her hand.  Her mother lent a hand in opening it, saying, “The frame alone would be a good buy at this price.  The fabric—well, it’s rayon, but don’t you think it’s well made?”

Why should they sell such a nice item at this price?  As this thought flashed through Yoshiko’s mind, yet a strange sort of revulsion also welled up within her, as if she had been bumped by someone with a deformity.  Yoshiko waited awhile as her mother lost herself in ransacking the pile and opening umbrellas to find one suitable to her age, then said, “Mother, you have your usual umbrella at home.”

“Yes, but….”  She shot a glance at Yoshiko.  “It’s ten, no, fifteen years old, I think: it’s worn and old-fashioned.  On top of that, Yoshiko, if I gave this away, it would make somebody happy.”

“That’s true.  If you gave it away, I guess it would be okay.”

“There’s no one who wouldn’t be happy.”

Yoshiko laughed, but was her mother really picking out an umbrella for that “somebody”?  It could not be anyone familiar, for if it were, she would not have said “somebody.”

“Well, Yoshiko, what do you think?”

“I guess you’re right.”

Notwithstanding Yoshiko’s unenthusiastic reply, she drew up to her mother’s side and went through the umbrellas looking for one that her mother might like.

Women clad in rayon, exclaiming “How cheap!  How cheap!” were coming and standing there by turns, offhandedly buying up the umbrellas.

Feeling pity for her mother, who seemed flushed and a bit stiff-faced, Yoshiko grew upset at her own lack of resolution.

Intending to say, “Why don’t you just quickly buy one of them?” Yoshiko turned to her mother, who said, “Yoshiko, let’s give up.”

“What?”

Her mother, smiling wanly, laid a hand on Yoshiko’s shoulder as if to whisk something off it, and she separated from the counter.  This time, however, it was Yoshiko who was reluctant, though after going five or six steps she felt relieved.

Taking the hand her mother had laid on her shoulder, she squeezed it and swung it sweepingly.  Coming shoulder to shoulder, they hurried to the exit.

That was seven years ago, in 1939.

 

Part  Three

With rain falling on the scorched-tin roofed shanty, a reminiscing Yoshiko thought they should have bought one of those ten-spoked umbrellas when they had the chance, and wanted to tell her mother laughingly that now those umbrellas would go for a hundred or two hundred yen apiece; but her mother had burned to death in Kanda during the fire-bombings.

Even had they bought one of those umbrellas, it probably would have burned up.

The glass paperweight chanced to survive.  As the Yokohama house of her in-laws was burning, the paperweight got mixed in with the things around the house that she had frantically grabbed and thrown into a bag, and it became her only memento of the days when she lived with her own family.

Come evening, strange voices of neighborhood girls could be heard in the side streets, rumoring that a person could make a thousand yen in a single night.  Picking up the forty-sen paperweight, which, when she was those girls’ age she had deliberated over for seven or eight days before buying, Yoshiko looked on the engraving of the cute little dog, suddenly realizing that there was not a single dog in the charred remains of the surrounding neighborhood.  The realization came as a shock to her.

 

Gojû-sen ginka

written by Kawabata Yasunari 1946

translated in Shizuoka City by P. Metevelis 1986