Her Town, Her Sheep
by MURAKAMI Haruki
Translated by Kiki
The first snow of the year has started to fall on the streets of Sapporo in northern Japan. It began as rain and then it changed to snow. It didn’t take long before it had changed back to rain. However on the streets of Sapporo snow really isn’t that romantic. It’s about as welcome as an unpopular relative. It is Friday October 23.
When I left Tokyo on a 747 from Narita airport, I was wearing only a T-shirt. It started to snow before I had finished listening to my 90-minute tape on my walkman.
“That sounds about par for the course,” my friend said to me. “We generally get the first snowfall of the year about now, and then it turns cold.”
“It gets really cold, doesn’t it?”
“No kidding. It gets really, really, cold.”
We grew up in a small quiet neighborhood in Kobe in western Japan. Our houses were separated by about 50 meters. We attended both junior and senior high school together. We also went on school trips and double dates with each other. Once we got so drunk that we rolled out of the cab when its doors popped open. After graduating from high school we attended different colleges: I went to Tokyo while he moved north to Hokkaido. I married one of my classmates from Tokyo, and my friend married a classmate of his from the city of Otaru in Hokkaido. That’s just the way life works out. We were scattered like seeds in the wind.
If he had attended college in Tokyo and if I had gone to college in Hokkaido, our lives might have turned out completely different. Perhaps I might have worked for a travel agency, gallivanting all over the globe. He may have become a writer in Tokyo. But fate led me to write novels while his path took him to a travel agency. And yet everyday the sun continues to shine.
My friend has a six year old son, Hokuto, and he always carries three pictures of his son in his wallet: Hokuto playing with sheep at the zoo; Hokuto wearing dress clothes for the autumn children’s Shichigosan Festival; Hokuto riding a rocket at the playground. I looked at each picture three times, one after another, before returning them to him. I picked up my beer and grabbed some icy “ruibe”, a Hokkaido delicacy.
“By the way, how is P doing?” He asked me.
“Pretty good,” I answered. “Just the other day I bumped into him on the street. He got divorced and is now living with a young woman.”
“What about Q?”
“He’s working for an ad agency, writing some just terrible copy.”
“That doesn’t surprise me..”
Etc. Etc.
We paid for the check and left the restaurant. It had started to rain again.
“Say, have you returned to Kobe recently?” I asked.
“Nope,” shaking his head. “It’s just too far away. How about you?”
“Me neither. I don’t really have much desire to go back.”
“Yeah.”
“I imagine the neighborhood has really changed over the years.”
We walked around the streets of Sapporo for only ten more minutes, quickly running out of things to talk about. I returned to my hotel and he went back to his small apartment.
“Don’t be a stranger. Take care of your self.”
“You too.”
Suddenly the thud of a converter made me realize that tomorrow we will again be separated by over 500 kilometers. In a few days we will again be walking on different streets. We will return to our respective boring routines. We will continue the aimless uphill struggle as members of the rat race.
Back in my hotel room I turned on the TV and started to watch a local public service- program. Climbing onto bed with without taking my shoes off, I attacked my smoked salmon sandwich and beer from room-service, absent-mindedly gazing at the screen.
A young woman wearing a dark blue dress was standing alone in the middle of the screen. The camera focused on her like a patient carnivore. It was transfixed on her image. The camera angle didn’t advance or retreat. I felt like I was watching a Goddard movie.
“I work in the publicity section of the R Town local government,” the woman said. She spoke with a slight local accent and her voice cracked a bit, maybe she was a little nervous. “R Town is small, with a population of only about 7500 people. Nobody famous has ever come from our little town, so I don’t think any of you have ever heard of it.”
That’s too bad I thought.
“Our main industries are agriculture and dairy farming. Rice used to be our town’s primary industry. But recent governmental subsidy policies have forced a radical shift toward barley, wheat and vegetables for the suburbs. On the outskirts of town there are pastures with about two hundred head of cattle, a hundred horses as well as a hundred sheep. At the moment the breeding of livestock continues to increase. Over the next three years we anticipate further increases in livestock production.“
I wouldn’t really describe the woman as beautiful. She was about twenty, wearing metal-framed glasses. She smiled like a broken refrigerator. Yet I thought she was wonderful. This Goddardesque camera technique captured her best feature. And it continued to emphasize that feature, keeping her in the best possible light. If any of us could spend ten minutes in front of that camera, maybe we too could look so wonderful. That’s how I saw it.
“In the middle of the 19th century gold dust was discovered in the R river near our little town. So we enjoyed a slight “gold-dust boom”. But soon the gold dust was exhausted, leaving behind the scars of innumerable shacks and paths on the mountain. It’s really quite sad.”
I popped the last bite of my smoked salmon sandwich into my mouth and washed it down with the last of my beer.
“The town…umm …the population of the town peaked at around ten thousand a few years ago. However recently the number of families who have left farming has increased. Another problem is that our young people have begun to escape to the suburbs. More than half of my classmates have already moved away. But those who have decided to remain are doing their best for our town.”
She continued to stare into the camera as though it were a mirror that might foretell the future. She seemed to be staring directly at me. Taking another beer from the refrigerator, I pulled the tab and took a big drink.
The woman’s town.
I didn’t have much trouble imagining her small town: A tiny train station where a train stops only eight times a day. A small space heater in the station’s waiting room. A small sterile circular area for buses to pick up people. A guide map of the town on which half of the letters are nearly illegible. A bed of marigolds and a row of mountain ash trees. A mangy white dog tired of living. An advertisement for school uniforms and headache remedies. A relatively big but useless main street. A want-ad poster for the Japanese defense forces. A three-story department store selling a variety of miscellaneous stuff. One small travel agency. A farmer’s co-op, a forestry center and an animal husbandry building. The town’s public bath, its solitary gray smokestack sticking up into the sky. Turning left before the main intersection, two blocks down, is the city hall building, where she sits at her desk in the p.r. section. Yes, definitely a small boring town. Half of the year covered with snow. She sits at her desk writing copy:
“We will soon be distributing medication for disinfecting sheep. If interested, please complete the proper forms and submit them as soon as possible.” Back in my small Sapporo hotel room I suddenly experienced a tangible connection with the woman’s life. I had made contact with her existence. However, something is missing. I feel like I am wearing a borrowed suit that doesn’t fit very well. I don’t feel comfortable. My feet are bound by rope. I consider cutting the rope with a dull hatchet blade, but if I do so, how will I return? That makes me uneasy. However I have to cut the rope. Maybe I have drunk too much beer. Maybe the snow is causing this sensation. That’s all I could think about. I slip back underneath the dark wings of reality. My town, her sheep.
Now she must get her sheep ready to be disinfected by that new drug. Me too, I need to get my sheep ready for winter. I have to gather hay and fill the tanks with kerosene. I should get that window fixed. After all winter is just around the corner. “That’s my town,” the woman continued on TV. “It’s not so interesting, but it’s my home. If you get a chance, please visit us. We’ll do whatever we can for you.”
And just like that she vanished from my TV screen. I turned it off and finished the rest of my beer. I began to consider visiting her town. Maybe she could help me. But after all I probably would never get around to visiting it. I have already thrown away too many things. Outside it continued to snow. A hundred head of sheep closed their eyes in the darkness.