Page:Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan.pdf/147



Yoshisaburo, the master of a barber’s shop at Roppongi, in Azabu, a suburb of Tokyo, had taken a bad cold, and, for a wonder, had taken to his bed for a few days. It was now just before the Festival of the Autumnal Equinox, and his shop was extremely busy with cutting and dressing the hair of many of the soldiers from the near-by barracks.

While he was lying in bed, the barber thought again about the two apprentices, Gen-ko and Jita-ko, who had once been in his employ, and who had been dismissed only a month before. As his mind dwelt on them he murmured to himself, “If only they were here now!”

Yoshisaburo was Gen-ko’s and Jita-ko’s senior by a year or so, and had once lived with them, serving his apprenticeship in the same shop. Their former master had taken a great deal of interest in Yoshisaburo, for he realised that he gave great promise of becoming a very skilled barber. Later on, his master had given him his only daughter in marriage and a few years after that the former had retired from business altogether, and the shop had been turned over to his son-in-law.

Gen-ko, who had been secretly in love with his