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Section 1
## Episode One: Rain on Brick Street
Taiwan edition. Reprinted from the Stray Dog Fiction Circle. Image restoration: Little Dark-Meow of the Sleeping Kingdom 1 Speak of a modern district in the Meiji period [Note: roughly 1868 to 1912], and the first image to rise is Ginza Brick Street, and on Ginza Brick Street it was raining hard. At first the rain was not heavy, yet the thunder rolled as if it meant to split the brick buildings open. The noise eased, and then the downpour struck the ground. The rain was so fierce that an umbrella was useless. Fortunately Brick Street had its arcades. Women in Western dress, gentlemen, and errand boys scattered in every direction, and the avenue—fifteen ken across [Note: one ken is about 1.8 meters]—stood empty. Even the rickshaws that had been racing along pulled up short and hurried their fares out of the soaking that was about to claim them. Everyone fled to the nearest eaves. “Mercy. This rain is more than a person can bear.” A man in striped trousers and a bowler hat burst into a building he knew well. On Ginza Brick Street the building was a rarity: a small wooden house with sliding doors. At the sudden visitor, several men inside opened their eyes a fraction, as if amused, and smiles touched their mouths. “And who should it be but Ise? I didn’t think you’d come of your own accord.” “Forgive the intrusion, Elder Harada. My, but this rain is coming down.” Ise set his stick aside and wiped his wet hat. Constable Harada, looking out the window, gave a small nod. “A real rain, all right. No one will be walking out there for a while.” Deeper in the little house, a young colleague who had been speaking with a boy in his teens beckoned gently…
## Episode Two: The Child Picked Up Empty-Handed
1 Akate knew perfectly well that this was the Meiji era. Twenty years had passed since the end of the Edo period. To him, the Meiji era was a time when things that had been ordinary only yesterday could change in the blink of an eye. Horse-drawn streetcars ran along the roads, and people could travel far from home. Carbon-arc lamps had replaced lanterns, and night was as bright as day. Year after year, life shifted by great degrees. That was ordinary now. And yet— Today he watched a change happen before his eyes, and he stood there stunned. Until a moment ago, the girl had looked about three. He was certain of it. He had not misseen. But when he came back to himself, she had grown to the age when a child would enter the ordinary course of primary school [Note: the name of a course in Japan’s old school system, before the School Education Act of 1947. After graduating from the ordinary course, a pupil could go on to the higher course], and she looked six. It was not the feeling that children grow up fast. It was more as if, the instant he looked away, someone had switched the child for another. “Is it my imagination?” In that instant Akate decided to accept the thought. “No. Perhaps I’m dreaming.” “Children do grow terribly fast, after all…” He muttered one possibility after another. But no matter how he tried to persuade himself, the hair on the back of his neck rose and would not lie down. Ginza, on what had once been Edo ground, had since the start of Meiji become a whole streetscape that might be called a window onto Western civilization: Brick Street, said to have been modeled on Regent Street in England. Along the road of two-story brick buildings there were even arcades, roadside trees, and footpaths, and one could not see at all…
## Episode Three: Reports of Yōkai
1 “This article says the yōkai have come back among people of late. The ones everyone thought vanished with the Edo period are showing up again in Meiji.” In a tatami room at Hyakugiya, a beef-hotpot shop in Ginza, Constable Harada nodded over the newspaper. He worked at the nearby Ginza police box. Ginza Brick Street was a grand avenue of brick buildings, the twin of a Western street, yet its police box was thoroughly Japanese, and from the outside it looked like a tumbledown house. It stood on the corner of the Ginza 4-chōme crossing, with the Chōya, the Mainichi, and the Chūō newspaper offices all nearby, so the little house drew the eye all the more. Still, it was the post that kept order on Ginza Brick Street, and though the pay was meager, Constable Harada worked diligently every day. “I hardly ever read the paper carefully, and when I do I find all sorts of astonishing reports.” Harada was off duty today. He had come with Taki for a beef hotpot after a long absence. On the second floor of Hyakugiya he read aloud the yōkai stories that were all the fashion: “We print here what our reporter has learned, and report to our readers the case of a courtesan gone missing and a shamisen that grew feathers. Absurdities fit only for a joke, yet of late they have been very well received.” The shamisen story ended. The next piece was a report of a mermaid captured, saying the mermaid was under protection and would soon be sent to Tokyo. “And cursed demon blades, and the like. A young man was possessed by an old sword handed down from the Edo period, and at once he turned into an oni, killed his wife and his old mother, and did not spare the child.” From the Edo period into…
## Episode Four: Noticing, and Being Noticed
1 “Wha— Brother Harada, Brother Taki, what’s going on?” It was late at night on Ginza Brick Street. Someone was pounding on the door of Hyakugiya, where a sign read Closed. The proprietor, Hyakken, snatched up a carving knife and peered quietly outside. When he looked hard, it was two regulars: Constables Harada and Taki. “Oh. You’re late tonight.” Harada and Taki were more friends than customers, so Hyakken opened the door and waved them in. But when the two stepped inside, Hyakken and Akate, a regular who had stayed on, both cried out—Harada was carrying a man who hung limp and did not move. In the parlor, Sister Ataka, a regular savoring good wine, could not help opening her eyes wide. “My. Who is that?” After setting the man down in a corner of the ground-floor parlor, Harada bowed to Hyakken and apologized. “I’m sorry. We happened to save this man while we were on duty. As you see, he’s unconscious. We don’t know his name, and with no other choice we brought him here.” At this hour there was no finding a doctor… Harada sighed in spite of himself. Don’t worry. He’s still alive. Akate felt at the man’s neck and spoke to reassure them. At those words Hyakken clearly relaxed. “So long as he isn’t a corpse. Let him lie in the corner. He’ll wake before long.” Harada and Taki apologized again, then went into the parlor and ordered beef hotpot and sake. Hyakken headed for the kitchen. Sister Ataka offered the two men wine first. “You both look worn out. What happened?” She asked it lightly, then frowned. Taki, seated beside Harada, took off his hat, and his head was covered in blood. “Oh. This is bad.” Sister Ataka set down her cup…
## Episode Five: Until Hana Passes
1 “Who are you?” The one who asked was a woman past forty, Izawa Hana, still beautiful. Inside the police box she held a staff more than three shaku long, raised like a long sword. Held at the point of that staff, hands lifted before Hana, was a constable who worked on Ginza Brick Street. The young constable, twenty-five or twenty-six, put on a show of crying “How frightening,” then answered plainly: “I’ve said it several times. My family name is Taki. My full name is Taki Shunnosuke.” Hana’s eyes widened, and doubt showed in her face. She still held the staff. She looked at the others in the police box and said, flatly: “This is not the Taki Shunnosuke I know… But… but he looks so very much like Brother Taki. Can such a thing be?” The real Taki ought to have been forty-five or forty-six. Hana’s voice was tangled with confusion. She had the staff set against Taki, and yet she looked as if she might cry in the next moment. Taki sighed quietly, eased the staff aside, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. Madam Izawa knows someone named Taki Shunnosuke, but that person’s age is not mine, which means I am not that person. Isn’t that so?” In other words, the man Hana knew and the Taki before her shared a name and were different people, and in all Japan there was surely more than one man who shared Taki’s name. “Right?” Taki’s answer was perfectly reasonable. Yet as he tossed the words out, he laughed, for some reason, as if the whole thing were absurd. On Brick Street in Tokyo’s Ginza, in the middle of a Western-style district of standing columns, a police box had been built. The police box stood between the Chōya newspaper office and a shop that dealt only in cotton and flannel…