Daisuke woke before his alarm as usual. Although his curtains were open, morning had not yet broken and he switched on the light to get dressed. The smell of miso soup used to be his alarm call. Back then, he would follow it to the kitchen where his mother was already up and dressed, singing along with the radio while she prepared breakfast, the air heavy with warmth and the dark windows clouded over with condensation.
Easing the sliding door closed behind him, Daisuke crept out of his bedroom, taking care not to make too much noise for fear of waking his father in the next room. He could hear the old man’s strained breathing, constant and raspy as wind through a gap in a sail, as he tiptoed through the kitchen. His mother used to prepare a lunch of rice balls and tea for Daisuke and his father to take with them on the boat. As they headed into the half-lit morning, they would turn to see her framed in the doorway. ‘Ki o tsukete,’ she would call. Take care.
These days, Daisuke waited until after work to eat, picking up bento boxes for himself and his father at the convenience store on his way home.
He used to bring fish, but recently if his father saw it, he shook his head like a stubborn child. ‘It’s bad.’
‘No, it’s fine now, Dad. That was a long time ago,’ Daisuke would try to convince him. ‘Look, it’s mackerel, your favourite.’ But the old man wouldn’t budge. He wondered if inside his father’s head it was a different year.
It started before Daisuke and his brother were born. Their parents told them that it began with the cats. They clawed at invisible tormentors, yowling and running in circles as their bodies jerked and twitched. Disorientated, they ran at walls or jumped into the sea. Birds fell from the sky and a blanket of dead fish covered Minamata bay. Next, the townspeople fell ill. Their hands and feet no longer obeyed them. The world became blurred and voices echoed in caves. Some looked at their parents, husbands, wives, or children and saw the smiling faces of strangers. Words lodged in their throats and choked them until they coughed up blood and their bodies convulsed. Babies were born with withered limbs and swollen brains and doctors couldn’t say why. Some people couldn’t control the nonsensical yells that escaped from their mouths and were committed to asylums. Others fell into a deep sleep, never to wake again. For years, nobody knew what caused the illness so they called it neko odori byo-cat dancing disease, but in time it came to be known as Minamata disease, after the town itself.
As Daisuke was heading for the front stoop to put on his wellington boots, he heard his father calling him.
‘Dad?’ he said, easing the sliding door open and peering into his father’s room. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Hiroshi?’ his father called.
‘No, Dad. It’s me, Daisuke.’
‘Hiroshi?’
Daisuke sighed. ‘Hiroshi is in Tokyo, Dad.’
His father blinked hard and looked at him. ‘Ah, yes. Of course,’ he said.
This was what he said these days if he was unsure about anything, the affirmative expression
at odds with the look of confusion on his face.
‘Can I get you something?’ asked Daisuke.
His father sat up, frowned, then reached for the glass of water beside his futon. He raised it to his mouth where it danced in front of his lips.
Daisuke stepped towards him. ‘Can I help?’
His father batted the offer away with his free hand. Daisuke watched as he drank some water and placed the glass back down in a shaky arc.
‘I have to go, Dad, but I’ll be back soon and I’ll bring you something to eat. Okay?’
His father nodded, then his face lit up all of a sudden. ‘Cigarettes!’ he said, pointing a triumphant finger at Daisuke. ‘Don’t forget my cigarettes.’
‘Okay, Dad,’ he said as his father placed his head back on the pillow.
Takeshi was already sitting on the low wall beside the dock when Daisuke approached. He had hired Takeshi to help out when his father finally retired, when sheer pride was no longer enough to provide him with the physical strength he needed to sustain him through the gruelling hours on the boat. Daisuke was unsure about hiring Takeshi at first.
He had approached Daisuke on the dock, shoulders hunched, a cigarette dangling from his lip as he nodded towards the boat. ‘I hear you’re looking for someone.’
Daisuke looked him over. He couldn’t be more than twenty, this lanky kid with scrawny arms and dyed-blonde hair that stood at impossible angles even in the wind. He couldn’t imagine him working on a boat. He looked like one of those punks who worked in a games arcade or pachinko parlour. There was something familiar about him that Daisuke couldn’t place. It was only later that he realised Takeshi reminded him of his brother Hiroshi before he moved to Tokyo for university, back when Hiroshi was the old Hiroshi.
‘It’s hard work,’ Daisuke said, ‘early starts.’
Takeshi shrugged, ‘That’s fine.’
‘It’s windy out there, you know? You might ruin your hair.’
‘I’ll wear a hat,’ said Takeshi.
The two men faced each other with stony expressions, neither one backing down.
Daisuke sighed, ‘Okay, if you’re really serious about this you can come out with me tomorrow.’
He was convinced Takeshi wouldn’t show, but there he was the next morning, and every morning since, sitting on the low wall waiting for Daisuke, the peak of his Fukuoka Hawks baseball cap pulled low over his face.
‘Ohayo!’ he called to Takeshi, as he sat beside him and lit a cigarette.
Takeshi acknowledged Daisuke with his customary nod as he continued to smoke. This had become a morning ritual for the men: looking out to sea and inhaling the sweet tobacco, readying themselves for the day’s work. Then, as though some invisible signal had passed between them, they stood in unison and boarded the boat.
The water was calm and dark as they cast off. Heading out to sea, the silence was broken by a lone gull, that swooped low and screeched. When they reached the spotter boat off the coast, the sun was starting to come up. Looking back toward shore, Minamata resembled a sleepy village in a painting yet to come to life. Small wooden houses were dotted in front of hills covered in rich, green trees. Dominating the skyline was the metallic factory at the edge of the bay.
Back when the people of the town began to get sick there were whispers among Daisuke’s father and the other fishermen that the chemical factory could be the cause. The fish were dying so there must be something in the water, and the factory pumped its wastewater into the bay, but the factory had brought prosperity to the town and almost half the townspeople worked there. Such a thing was unthinkable.
Daisuke turned the gauge to release the net and the old sea-worn ropes creaked as they were unravelled from the spool and dropped into the sea. It was the job his father used to do, and it still felt strange to be the one doing it. They trawled with the net stretched out between theirs and the spotter boat. It became choppier as they headed further out. Green waves speckled with white foam danced around them. Daisuke and Takeshi put on their raincoats to protect them from the salt water that whooshed and splashed onto the deck. A thin line of smoke rose from one of the buildings on land. The people of Minamata were waking now, opening their blinds, and turning their faces to the morning light. Daisuke liked to imagine the countless kitchens, the bustle and busyness of morning, the people beginning their days.
They lifted the buoys into the boat and dragged in the long trailing net, before heaving the catch on-board. Takeshi and Daisuke worked in tandem like old dance partners, each long familiar with the other’s movements. Takeshi held the net open, as Daisuke scooped out the fish and loaded them into the hold. A good haul today. The shiroko were tiny-no more than half an inch long. Back on shore, they would be washed, steamed and air-dried in the processing plant on the quay, then distributed throughout the country. Sometimes Daisuke liked to imagine where the fish would end up, his ambassadors to cities he had never visited. He pictured a stressed out salaryman in Osaka, or a pretty student sitting on a bar stool in Sapporo, eating the snack he had hauled from the sea with his hands. ‘What delicious fish!’ they would say, or in Daisuke’s more lucid moments, ‘These fish were surely caught by a wonderful fisherman.’
Back on the dock, he turned to Takeshi. ‘About tomorrow, you’re sure you’ll manage okay?’
Takeshi nodded. ‘No problem. ‘
‘I could always postpone,’ said Daisuke. ‘Maybe next month would be a better time...’
Takeshi shrugged. ‘What’s different about next month?’
Daisuke thought about this. His work routine was unlikely to change next month, or next year for that matter. There was never an ideal time to take a holiday. Hiroshi had said the same thing to him on the phone when he had invited him.
‘Okay,’ said Daisuke. ‘I’ll be back Sunday evening. See you here first thing Monday.’
The next morning, Daisuke woke before his alarm, got dressed, grabbed the overnight bag he had packed the night before and let himself out of the house. It felt strange to be walking towards the train station, in the opposite direction from the sea. He had visited Hiroshi only once before, shortly after their mother died. She had needed a lot of care towards the end. Over the years, her eyesight diminished until she was blind, one of the many effects of the Minamata disease that plagued her. She always refused to call it by that name throughout the years their legal case dragged on.
‘How can they name it a disease,’she said,’when it was a poisoning?’
Daisuke looked out the window at the scenery passing by as the shinkansen hummed along the track. Small houses and fields gave way to high-rises, car parks, and billboards and then back to small houses and fields again as they sped through a succession of towns. His aunt should be arriving at his house about now to bring his father lunch. She had insisted on Daisuke making the trip.
‘It will do you good,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about your dad. I’ll take good care of him.’
Hiroshi met him at the station and they walked the short distance to his apartment in Ginza. His brother wasn’t the same in Tokyo, far from the salty air and the sound of waves. His accent sounded different somehow. His smile looked like that of another man. Even his walk didn’t look the same. Hiroshi was tied up with work for the rest of the day and had to head back to his office. He was the vice-president of some company that did something with computers Daisuke didn’t really grasp the specifics of.
He had moved to a bigger place since the last time Daisuke visited, a penthouse apartment.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Hiroshi said as he headed out the door, briefcase in hand. ‘We can meet up later for a bite to eat and a drink.’
Daisuke tried to read a book, but found he couldn’t concentrate. He looked out the window. The street below was busy but no street sounds filtered up to him. The apartment was silent apart from the faint hum of the refrigerator. He grabbed his coat and made his way downstairs. He spent the rest of the day walking around Tokyo with increasing feelings of unease until his feet ached and it was time to meet up with Hiroshi.
‘How was your day?’ Hiroshi asked.
‘Great,’ said Daisuke . ‘Great.’ He took a long swig of his beer.
‘Where did you go?’
Daisuke realised he had no idea. ‘Oh, you know, I walked around a bit.’
‘No work tomorrow.’ Hiroshi smiled as he stretched his arms over his head. ‘I thought we could go fishing.’
Daisuke laughed. ‘Fishing, in Tokyo? You’re joking, right?’
‘I know a place,’ said Hiroshi.
The next morning they set off early. Although on his day off, Hiroshi still looked business-like in a freshly ironed shirt and slacks. Daisuke looked uncertainly at the old sweatshirt and jeans he was wearing.
‘Should I change?’ he asked.
Hiroshi looked at his watch. ‘We better get going.’
They had to change trains three times and always run to catch the next one. They bumped into two of Hiroshi’s work colleagues at one of the stations and Daisuke noticed how they bowed low and addressed him formally.
‘My brother, the fisherman,’ Hiroshi said, smiling as he introduced Daisuke. He replayed this scene to himself later. There was a trace of something in the way Hiroshi had said it-pride or scorn, he couldn’t place which.
Ichigaya was both a train station and a carp fishing pond. They rented flimsy fishing rods from a little booth in the corner.
‘Welcome!’ chirped the tiny woman behind the counter. ‘If you catch seven kilos of carp today, you get one free hour of fishing. There is a weighing scales beside each pond. Please return the fish to the special pool as quickly as possible after weighing it. Enjoy!’
Daisuke and Hiroshi sat on overturned yellow crates, surrounded by tall buildings as trains thundered past. They watched their two floats bobbing side by side on the green murky pond. Starring into the water, an image came to Daisuke.
He turned to Hiroshi, ‘Hey, do you remember the bicycles?’
‘The bicycles?’
‘Yeah. It was around the time of the court case. They went missing and we found them in the sea. Someone had thrown them off the pier.’
Hiroshi frowned and looked into the pond as though the answer might be there.
‘Do you not remember?’
‘You have a better memory than me,’ Hiroshi said at last.
What Daisuke remembered most from that time was the insidious silence. It crept up on them like goosebumps. By taking legal action against the corporation who ran the factory, theirs and the other families in the litigation group had broken an unwritten rule-putting their own needs before those of the community. In school, children would no longer play with them. One day when Daisuke was in the local shop with his mother, a woman refused to sell her rice.
‘None left’ she said curtly and turned to another customer. Their father found his fishing boat sabotaged, the paintwork scratched and the nets slashed.
‘But things are better now,’ said Hiroshi. ‘The water...’
‘Yes, things are fine,’ said Daisuke. ‘The bay is clean. Almost like it never happened.’
‘And Dad? He must miss it since he retired. I’ve been meaning to get home. You know how it is.’
‘Yeah, Dad is...’ Daisuke felt pressure on his line.
‘You’ve got one!’
Hiroshi set down his own rod and reached for the net as Daisuke reeled in the carp. It was small and muddy-brown with scratches on its scales, damage from countless hooks. As they carried the net over to the scales they looked at the fish, then at each other, and they both started to laugh. Somehow in this moment Hiroshi was his little brother again. Daisuke placed the fish in the pool and watched it dart back into the murk, aware that it was only a matter of time before it would be caught again. He wondered if Hiroshi had really forgotten about the bikes, or if he had chosen not to remember. That would be easier here. Perhaps if he was this far from the sea air, the boat, his childhood home and his family, he would choose to forget too.
Daisuke was relieved to get back to his routine on Monday. When they dropped off their haul at the processing plant, there was some extra mackerel which the manager offered to Daisuke and Takeshi.
‘I love mackerel but I’m not much of a cook,’ said Takeshi. ‘You go ahead.’
‘Well, why don’t you come back to my place and I’ll cook it for us both?’ Daisuke was surprised to hear himself say. ‘I never cook just for myself and my dad doesn’t eat fish any more.’
Takeshi nodded and they headed off.
His father was watching television, a cigarette in hand, when Daisuke let himself into the house.
‘Dad, I’d like you to meet Takeshi. He works with me on the boat.’
‘Ah, yes. In Tokyo.’ His father greeted Takeshi and bowed.
‘No, not in Tokyo, Dad. He works with me here.’
His father frowned. ‘Ah, yes. Of course.’
‘I’m gonna cook us some dinner, dad. I’ll call you when it’s ready.’
On the way to the kitchen, they passed the family butsudan and Daisuke noticed the fresh flowers beside the photograph of his mother. His aunt must have put them there over the weekend.
‘Is this your mother?’ asked Takeshi.
‘Yes, she was sick for a long time.’
Takeshi nodded. ‘My grandmother too. Towards the end it was... difficult to see her like that.’
‘I didn’t realise,’ said Daisuke, an unspoken understanding passing between them.
In the kitchen he mixed sake, soy sauce and grated ginger together, then cut the mackerel into pieces and tossed it in the marinade.
‘I’ll just leave that to soak for a bit.’
He handed Takeshi a beer and placed some rice and water in the rice cooker. He turned on the radio and a cheesy pop tune came on. Takeshi started to sing along in a girlish voice, his tough guy image in tatters as Daisuke laughed and joined in.
Daisuke placed the food on the table and sat down with his father and Takeshi.
‘Looks great,’ said Takeshi, helping himself to some fish.
‘Dad, I know you don’t like this so I made you some chicken instead,’ said Daisuke.
His father peered at the plate of fish. ‘What is it?’
‘You don’t have to eat it. It’s mackerel.’
‘Yes, of course. My favourite.’ His father surprised him by reaching for a piece. He took a bite. ‘It’s good,’ he said.
Takeshi nodded in agreement. ‘Very tasty.’
Daisuke’s father smiled in turn at Daisuke then Takeshi. ‘Just like your mother used to make.’
This story was first published in Máire T Robinson’s short story collection Your Mixtape Unravels My Heart (Doire Press, 2013). She is also the author of a novel, Skin Paper Stone (New Island Books, 2015)
