Confession
by B. Archie Buchan
Juntaro’s breath is shallow. The hope that courses through his body is almost tangible, expanding and restricting his lungs as moonlight catches on the autumn cedar leaves and lights up the dirt path. Seven pairs of geta-clad feet scuffle in single file like monks on a pilgrimage, wearing the wooden sandals and yukata being one of the conditions to join this historic occasion—the final act of Satoshi Kanazawa, the greatest Rakugo storyteller of his generation, missing for ten years after disappearing on the day Juntaro turned fifteen, and still the strongest link he has to his late mother. Juntaro promised himself he would retain his cynicism, not be set up for disappointment, but twilight’s promise knocks incessantly on his resolve and whispers that the legend is really back.
Juntaro had meant to see the show that day, so long ago now, for his birthday present, after his mother had lined up for hours to guarantee their place in the front row. With Kanazawa fiercely loyal to all things traditional, the tickets were written out using thin calligraphy brushes and sold at one stall in Ningyocho.
And then he vanished. His wife, his muse, as well. Just gone, and of course, the performance gone with them. Everyone had been refunded, but no amount of bowing and apologies could soften the disappointment. After years of watching from the back, finally deciding to pay the exorbitant fees to see him up close, just once, to savor every subtle gesture as he sat and told his stories, masterfully portraying every character himself. To have it so strangely and sadly taken from them felt much heavier than just missing a play. It marked the end of a childhood spent in laughter and ease, with the two of them watching Kanazawa’s comedies together, the most prominent and painful memory that Juntaro had left.
The mystery had remained unsolved for a decade, rumors of murder, stories of suicide, but nothing confirmed, and Juntaro had never given up on his return. This, though, was too much. An invitation from his friend, on the anniversary of the date they’d missed, to a secret, final performance and a reveal of what really happened all that time ago. It was nothing short of miraculous, and from the moment his mother’s spirit had left her body, frail with sickness, even as he held her and begged it not to go, Juntaro had stopped believing in magic.
And yet, how hard to doubt now, walking in a mysterious procession in silence to where they will wait in the clearing for the show to begin. The first man in line stops suddenly, and everyone bumps into the person in front of them, a slapstick moment that seems like a mistake until he begins to laugh in the darkness—a deep-throated guffaw that brings Juntaro back to his childhood and his mother, a one-of-a-kind sound that could only belong to the man himself. Kanazawa has been leading the party since they entered the forest, and the performance has already begun.
In a gap in the trees, a tiny stage is set, lit up on either side by tall, orange lanterns that glow onto the cushion where Kanazawa will sit and perform his final play. Around it, he can make out six seats with sake bottles and cups placed next to each one.
Shuffling into their places, the other audience members are as awestruck by the situation as Juntaro, features half-lost in the dark but all smiling wide. His host is already seated and facing them, looking down with the majesty of a monarch upon his subjects.
“This, as you know, will be my final act. The truth. I will call it Confession. Welcome.” His face is set, eyes closed, countenance as far as imaginable from the bawdy, physical comedian that Juntaro and his mother had loved. Even the insects around seem to silence themselves in reverence as he speaks.
“Let me begin with what you already know. My wife, Katsuko. From the moment I saw her, I knew she was the one. I knew that if she didn’t want me back, I would choose to be alone rather than with anyone else. The world outside her ceased to exist, and I grasped at every moment in her presence.” Appearing to rise up in the air, Kanazawa’s expression softens, and his shoulders slump as he assumes the role of his wife, humming and brushing long, invisible hair with an ivory comb. His eyes flick to the right, and he scowls playfully, voice hitting a feminine tone.
“Satoshi, why are you watching me now? Let me get ready in peace for once, you foolish man.”
He drops down to his knees and looks up, deepening his pitch but speaking in a whimper. “Never. You’ll never look just like this again, and I won’t miss a single stroke of your brushing.”
Juntaro waits for the fart joke, the lowbrow moment that had made Kanazawa such a divisive performer, dismissed by theater purists as trite humor made for idiots by a fellow moron. It doesn’t come, as the actor goes through familiar scenes, his self-deprecating worship for Katsuko something that had always bordered on humiliation. He watches her sleep, follows her, and spies on her in the bath, all the while showing her awareness of his obsession with mock annoyance and mischievous, teasing glances. From so close, Juntaro cannot understand how anyone could fail to see the man’s talent, as if it’s really two people taking turns to use the body on the stage, every micro-expression hit so perfectly that a raised eyebrow or a shrug of the hand can switch him between characters in the one-man play.
A third one joins the tale, as Kanazawa’s demeanor stiffens to rock-solid stoicism. He speaks in monotone. “Brother, I’m sorry. I hate to be the bearer of this news, but I must be straight. Your wife is laughing at you. Whenever you are gone, she brings other men here, to your own house.”
His distinctive laugh shows him return to playing himself, and he stares forward with a challenge in his eyes. “I will not hear it.”
Kanazawa goes back and forth—his brother is poker-faced and insistent, quoting friends and gossip, finally making an appeal that betrays his inner desperation to bring Katsuko’s behavior into the open. “Give her a chance to prove her fidelity. Tell her you have to stay with me tonight. Return unannounced at midnight, and you will catch her in the act, I am sure of it. If I’m wrong, I will gift you my entire life savings and leave your life in apology for my accusation.”
Kanazawa centers his entire confidence and duty to his wife into one lucent expression of dismissal. “Okay, okay. But I believe that you’re acting in good faith. You will remain as my brother, and I will ask Katsuko herself if she wants your money when we are making fun of your stupidity.”
As the night gets darker, the lantern light is brighter around Kanazawa, and he throws off his gown to announce the beginning of the second act, exposing plain, black garments underneath. He mimes crawling along the ground, chest down, chin up, every movement slow and secretive. Rising like a snake under a charmer’s hypnosis, he peeks in through a window, showing with a lack of reaction that he sees nothing. Moving along to the next window, he spies in once again.
This time, his eyes narrow, his face drops, and all the life seems to leave his body as he crumples down to the ground. When he finally raises his head, it’s as if all of the man’s prior effervescence has drained away, replaced by a blank, deathly grimace with all the portent and menace of a thousand black clouds.
This is not who Juntaro remembers, the lewd comedian whose performances were the only thing that truly made his mother’s mask slip. His heart pounds so heavily he wonders if the others around can hear it.
The relationship between Katsuko and Kanazawa continues as before in the next scenes, only now there is a barely concealed fury every time he speaks. She is oblivious to what he knows, coquettish one moment, outwardly tormenting him the next, and while his words of deference are unchanged, whenever he plays the part of himself, his face catches the shadows and distorts over and again until eventually his nose, eyes, and mouth bulge and gurn in a demonic caricature.
Juntaro steals a look around at the audience, wondering if they have the same creeping fear as he does when he remembers the title of the play. He sees no smiles, but no outward concern. One picks up his drink, and the others follow, and he remembers his own bottle of sake. He gulps half down, enjoying the crisp rice-wine flavor as he swallows greedily, happy for the distraction from the discomfort of the play. As soon as he returns his attention, though, his whole body sinks with horror.
Kanazawa kneels in Seiza position, posture upright, giggling, oblivious, and unmistakably Katsuko, holding the same white sake bottle to her lips, one hand lifting the bottom in a clear representation of her husband’s encouragement to drink.
Again, that ghastly expression falls across his features, and Kanazawa speaks from his own point of view. His words are meant for Katsuko, but they are addressed loudly, voice shaking, to the viewers.
“I gave you everything, and it wasn’t enough. Do you feel anything changing inside your body? This is my confession to you, my love. I saw you last night with Shimamura. Yes, Shimamura, his royal highbrow-ness, stuck-up poet who has looked down on me for years, the worst possible man for you to see behind my back. I heard your moans of pleasure and understood that he gave you something I never did. You could never shudder and weep like that for a trite comedian like me, and now everything I ever did is worthless, a lifelong mistake.”
Twisted hate bleeds into the air around them, and Juntaro can barely watch as he feels his own insides begin to churn and constrict. Trying to stand, he doubles over, a sharp pain gouging into his stomach. Kanazawa continues.
“Thank you. This, then, was my final act. In my time away, I realized the truth—that it was you who was to blame. Your veneration for my frivolity, the way I pissed away any talent I had to keep your basest level amused, is what took my wife away from me.”
This half-monologue, half-lecture thunders around Juntaro’s head as he falls into a feverish dream state, stomach now burning, sweat pouring down his forehead and neck. Is this how he is going to die?
“But I forgive you. The only life I’m going to take today is my own. The poison I just drank is the same one I gave to Katsuko all that time ago, knowing as she faded before me that I killed myself along with her. But you, you will live on. Since you love toilet humor so much, I gave you a weaker medicine to go with my pathetic tale of guilt and jealousy.” With his last words, that booming voice dwindles into a croak, cracking under the weight of loss and self-loathing.
Backed by a cacophony of flatulence that echoes through the trees, Juntaro’s bowels loosen, and his underwear fills with an avalanche of heat before the pungent stink rises and hits him, all of the guests groaning as steaming shit streams down their legs.
Later, he will report to the police. Later, Kanazawa’s confession will be confirmed as the truth, and his legacy, overnight, will become that of a madman. Now, though, lying caked in warm, soft feces, Juntaro just thinks how lucky it is that his mother couldn’t be there to hear the final, unhinged laughter of their hero.
Juntaro had meant to see the show that day, so long ago now, for his birthday present, after his mother had lined up for hours to guarantee their place in the front row. With Kanazawa fiercely loyal to all things traditional, the tickets were written out using thin calligraphy brushes and sold at one stall in Ningyocho.
And then he vanished. His wife, his muse, as well. Just gone, and of course, the performance gone with them. Everyone had been refunded, but no amount of bowing and apologies could soften the disappointment. After years of watching from the back, finally deciding to pay the exorbitant fees to see him up close, just once, to savor every subtle gesture as he sat and told his stories, masterfully portraying every character himself. To have it so strangely and sadly taken from them felt much heavier than just missing a play. It marked the end of a childhood spent in laughter and ease, with the two of them watching Kanazawa’s comedies together, the most prominent and painful memory that Juntaro had left.
The mystery had remained unsolved for a decade, rumors of murder, stories of suicide, but nothing confirmed, and Juntaro had never given up on his return. This, though, was too much. An invitation from his friend, on the anniversary of the date they’d missed, to a secret, final performance and a reveal of what really happened all that time ago. It was nothing short of miraculous, and from the moment his mother’s spirit had left her body, frail with sickness, even as he held her and begged it not to go, Juntaro had stopped believing in magic.
And yet, how hard to doubt now, walking in a mysterious procession in silence to where they will wait in the clearing for the show to begin. The first man in line stops suddenly, and everyone bumps into the person in front of them, a slapstick moment that seems like a mistake until he begins to laugh in the darkness—a deep-throated guffaw that brings Juntaro back to his childhood and his mother, a one-of-a-kind sound that could only belong to the man himself. Kanazawa has been leading the party since they entered the forest, and the performance has already begun.
In a gap in the trees, a tiny stage is set, lit up on either side by tall, orange lanterns that glow onto the cushion where Kanazawa will sit and perform his final play. Around it, he can make out six seats with sake bottles and cups placed next to each one.
Shuffling into their places, the other audience members are as awestruck by the situation as Juntaro, features half-lost in the dark but all smiling wide. His host is already seated and facing them, looking down with the majesty of a monarch upon his subjects.
“This, as you know, will be my final act. The truth. I will call it Confession. Welcome.” His face is set, eyes closed, countenance as far as imaginable from the bawdy, physical comedian that Juntaro and his mother had loved. Even the insects around seem to silence themselves in reverence as he speaks.
“Let me begin with what you already know. My wife, Katsuko. From the moment I saw her, I knew she was the one. I knew that if she didn’t want me back, I would choose to be alone rather than with anyone else. The world outside her ceased to exist, and I grasped at every moment in her presence.” Appearing to rise up in the air, Kanazawa’s expression softens, and his shoulders slump as he assumes the role of his wife, humming and brushing long, invisible hair with an ivory comb. His eyes flick to the right, and he scowls playfully, voice hitting a feminine tone.
“Satoshi, why are you watching me now? Let me get ready in peace for once, you foolish man.”
He drops down to his knees and looks up, deepening his pitch but speaking in a whimper. “Never. You’ll never look just like this again, and I won’t miss a single stroke of your brushing.”
Juntaro waits for the fart joke, the lowbrow moment that had made Kanazawa such a divisive performer, dismissed by theater purists as trite humor made for idiots by a fellow moron. It doesn’t come, as the actor goes through familiar scenes, his self-deprecating worship for Katsuko something that had always bordered on humiliation. He watches her sleep, follows her, and spies on her in the bath, all the while showing her awareness of his obsession with mock annoyance and mischievous, teasing glances. From so close, Juntaro cannot understand how anyone could fail to see the man’s talent, as if it’s really two people taking turns to use the body on the stage, every micro-expression hit so perfectly that a raised eyebrow or a shrug of the hand can switch him between characters in the one-man play.
A third one joins the tale, as Kanazawa’s demeanor stiffens to rock-solid stoicism. He speaks in monotone. “Brother, I’m sorry. I hate to be the bearer of this news, but I must be straight. Your wife is laughing at you. Whenever you are gone, she brings other men here, to your own house.”
His distinctive laugh shows him return to playing himself, and he stares forward with a challenge in his eyes. “I will not hear it.”
Kanazawa goes back and forth—his brother is poker-faced and insistent, quoting friends and gossip, finally making an appeal that betrays his inner desperation to bring Katsuko’s behavior into the open. “Give her a chance to prove her fidelity. Tell her you have to stay with me tonight. Return unannounced at midnight, and you will catch her in the act, I am sure of it. If I’m wrong, I will gift you my entire life savings and leave your life in apology for my accusation.”
Kanazawa centers his entire confidence and duty to his wife into one lucent expression of dismissal. “Okay, okay. But I believe that you’re acting in good faith. You will remain as my brother, and I will ask Katsuko herself if she wants your money when we are making fun of your stupidity.”
As the night gets darker, the lantern light is brighter around Kanazawa, and he throws off his gown to announce the beginning of the second act, exposing plain, black garments underneath. He mimes crawling along the ground, chest down, chin up, every movement slow and secretive. Rising like a snake under a charmer’s hypnosis, he peeks in through a window, showing with a lack of reaction that he sees nothing. Moving along to the next window, he spies in once again.
This time, his eyes narrow, his face drops, and all the life seems to leave his body as he crumples down to the ground. When he finally raises his head, it’s as if all of the man’s prior effervescence has drained away, replaced by a blank, deathly grimace with all the portent and menace of a thousand black clouds.
This is not who Juntaro remembers, the lewd comedian whose performances were the only thing that truly made his mother’s mask slip. His heart pounds so heavily he wonders if the others around can hear it.
The relationship between Katsuko and Kanazawa continues as before in the next scenes, only now there is a barely concealed fury every time he speaks. She is oblivious to what he knows, coquettish one moment, outwardly tormenting him the next, and while his words of deference are unchanged, whenever he plays the part of himself, his face catches the shadows and distorts over and again until eventually his nose, eyes, and mouth bulge and gurn in a demonic caricature.
Juntaro steals a look around at the audience, wondering if they have the same creeping fear as he does when he remembers the title of the play. He sees no smiles, but no outward concern. One picks up his drink, and the others follow, and he remembers his own bottle of sake. He gulps half down, enjoying the crisp rice-wine flavor as he swallows greedily, happy for the distraction from the discomfort of the play. As soon as he returns his attention, though, his whole body sinks with horror.
Kanazawa kneels in Seiza position, posture upright, giggling, oblivious, and unmistakably Katsuko, holding the same white sake bottle to her lips, one hand lifting the bottom in a clear representation of her husband’s encouragement to drink.
Again, that ghastly expression falls across his features, and Kanazawa speaks from his own point of view. His words are meant for Katsuko, but they are addressed loudly, voice shaking, to the viewers.
“I gave you everything, and it wasn’t enough. Do you feel anything changing inside your body? This is my confession to you, my love. I saw you last night with Shimamura. Yes, Shimamura, his royal highbrow-ness, stuck-up poet who has looked down on me for years, the worst possible man for you to see behind my back. I heard your moans of pleasure and understood that he gave you something I never did. You could never shudder and weep like that for a trite comedian like me, and now everything I ever did is worthless, a lifelong mistake.”
Twisted hate bleeds into the air around them, and Juntaro can barely watch as he feels his own insides begin to churn and constrict. Trying to stand, he doubles over, a sharp pain gouging into his stomach. Kanazawa continues.
“Thank you. This, then, was my final act. In my time away, I realized the truth—that it was you who was to blame. Your veneration for my frivolity, the way I pissed away any talent I had to keep your basest level amused, is what took my wife away from me.”
This half-monologue, half-lecture thunders around Juntaro’s head as he falls into a feverish dream state, stomach now burning, sweat pouring down his forehead and neck. Is this how he is going to die?
“But I forgive you. The only life I’m going to take today is my own. The poison I just drank is the same one I gave to Katsuko all that time ago, knowing as she faded before me that I killed myself along with her. But you, you will live on. Since you love toilet humor so much, I gave you a weaker medicine to go with my pathetic tale of guilt and jealousy.” With his last words, that booming voice dwindles into a croak, cracking under the weight of loss and self-loathing.
Backed by a cacophony of flatulence that echoes through the trees, Juntaro’s bowels loosen, and his underwear fills with an avalanche of heat before the pungent stink rises and hits him, all of the guests groaning as steaming shit streams down their legs.
Later, he will report to the police. Later, Kanazawa’s confession will be confirmed as the truth, and his legacy, overnight, will become that of a madman. Now, though, lying caked in warm, soft feces, Juntaro just thinks how lucky it is that his mother couldn’t be there to hear the final, unhinged laughter of their hero.
B. Archie Buchan is an English writer of literary fiction. After receiving his MA in Creative Writing at the University of Hull, he moved to Japan, where he has lived for the last fifteen years. Amongst other things, he has worked as a high school writing teacher, a language advisor for NHK, and a script editor for TBS. He is currently looking to release his debut novel, Into the Empty World.