Once a friend of Keitaro's, despairing of his own talent, was troubled about whether to take his final examinations or to leave school. During a trip an acquaintance of this student had visited Zenkoji Temple and sent him a sacred Buddhist lot that he had drawn for him. This good luck fortune, numbered 55, contained such sentences as "The clouds are dispersed and the moon is bright again" and "The flowers are in bloom and prosperity returns." Encouraged by these words, Keitaro's friend undertook the examination as a trial and passed. This incident interested Keitaro so much that he went around to various shrines and randomly drew sacred lots, although at that time he had no particular objective in mind. So it could be said that even in ordinary times Keitaro had sufficient qualification to be a fortuneteller's client. On the other hand, even in the situation in which he now found himself, a considerable amount of frivolous pleasure was mixed into his idea of consulting an augury.
Keitaro searched his memory for a fortune-teller he could visit, but he couldn't come up with anyone. He had heard the names of some professional ones, one near Hakusan, another in Shiba Park, and still another in a certain block on the Ginza. Yet he could not bring himself to go to them because their very fame made him suspicious of quackery. Still less did he wish to fall prey to the impertinence of an imposter who would utter quite plausibly a random guess he actually knew was untrue. Keitaro hoped to find some old man with a generous growth of beard who, in a house not too crowded with clients, would get to the point in words that were succinct and epigrammatic. As he was thinking of such a fortuneteller, he recalled the image of the retired priest from Ipponji Temple in his hometown, a man his father used to visit for consultations.
Keitaro suddenly seemed to awaken from the foolish state he had been in, unable to tell exactly whether he had been meditating or merely sitting. So he put on his hat, thinking vaguely he would at least go out and perhaps be lured by destiny toward some fortune-teller's shingle.
It had been quite a while since he had last gone to Kurumazaka in the Shitaya district. He walked straight east along the street on both sides of which he saw temple gates, dealers in Buddhist articles, old-fashioned druggists, and shops which had heaps of junk handed down from the Tokugawa era lined up for sale, dust and all. He deliberately passed through the old grounds of Monzeki and came out at the corner where the Yakko, a restaurant famous for broiled eel, stood.
As a boy he had often heard about the prosperity of the temple in Asakusa dedicated to Kannon, his grandfather knowing this district quite well at the time Tokyo was called Edo. In the old man's stories were the names of such places as Nakamise, Okuyama, Namiki, Komagata, and even some little used by Tokyoites nowadays, where, his grandfather had told him, various delicacies could be found. There was, for example, an elegant restaurant on Hirokoji, the Sumiya, famous for its rice boiled with rape leaves and bean curd baked and coated with miso, and there was another famous freshwater-fish restaurant with its pretty rope curtains hanging at the entrance just opposite a shrine at Komagata. But what had impressed the young Keitaro most was the old man's account of the swordplay artistry of Hyosuke Nagai, the sword-swallowing magician Mamezo, and the dried-up bodies of big toads with four forelegs and six behind, apparently caught at the foot of Mount Ibuki in Omi Province.
Abundant explanations of these mysteries were conveniently offered to a child's imagination by the old picture books stowed away in a chest on the upper floor of the family storehouse. A man crouching on a small wooden table and wearing a pair of high clogs with only one thin support, his kimono sleeves tucked up with a sash as he was about to draw from its sheath a curved sword longer than his own height; Jiraiya, master of the occult sitting cross-legged on the back of a huge toad as he practiced the black arts; an ancient gray-bearded man at a Chinese desk holding a physiognomist's magnifying glass larger than his face, looking down through it at a man with a top-knot who was lying prostrate before him — most of these strange characters had come from those early picture books and had their existence in Keitaro's imaginary Asakusa.
Thus, the image Keitaro had ever since his boyhood days of the compound of Kannon around the thirty-six-yard frontage of its main temple had always been enveloped in historically luring mysteries and dazzling colors. Since he had come to live in Tokyo, these strange illusions had inevitably been shattered, yet at times he would still drift back to fancy that under the roof of Kannon's temple one might find a stork's nest. Just some such vagary working latently in him had made him think Asakusa might hold what he wanted, involuntarily directing his steps there. But when he came out from the back of Lunar Park onto a street with a number of movie theaters, he was surprised by the congestion and felt this was hardly the place for diviners.
He thought, before leaving the area, that he would at least pass his palm over the head of the Pindola for luck, but he could not remember in which part of the grounds it was. He went up to the main temple and, after looking only at a great paper lantern dedicated by a fishmongers' guild and at a votive tablet of Yorimasa killing the chimera, left by the Gate of Thunder.
Keitaro was expecting to find a fortune-teller or two by the time he reached Asakusa Bridge. If he did, he would enter no matter what sort of fortune-teller it was. Or perhaps he might turn at the crossing just before the College of Technology and head toward Yanagibashi. He walked along as lightheartedly as if he were looking for a good place to eat.
As often happens when one is searching for something, Keitaro could not find a single fortune-teller on the broad street he was walking along, though on his usual walks no matter where he went he would see any number of shingles for divination. He reached Kuramae feeling somewhat disappointed, thinking that in this attempt too, as was typical with him, he might have to stop halfway without seeing it through to the end.
At last he caught sight of the kind of house he was looking for. He saw a thick oblong board of hardwood on which was written in two lines "Divination in Personal Matters," and under these characters were engraved in white the words "Fortune-telling with Bunsen Coins." Beneath these characters was a picture in red lacquer of a cayenne pepper. It was to this quaint sign that Keitaro's eyes were first drawn.
As he looked more closely, he realized that the house was part of an apothecary shop which had been partitioned off, the narrow part having a neat built-in section like a lean-to attached to it. Inside were rows of bags filled with powdered spices, showing that the owner not only told fortunes but, as indicated by the picture on the signboard, sold these condiments as well. Having made this observation, Keitaro peered into the lean-to, which looked rather like a shop specializing in bean-jam rice dumplings, and discovered a small elderly woman doing needlework.
Though there seemed to be no more to the living quarters than this narrow room, nothing could be seen of any fortune-teller. Keitaro thought he might be out, his wife taking care of the shop in his absence. But the construction of the shop suggested it was connected with the apothecary in back, so Keitaro could not conclude right then that the master was absent. He proceeded a few steps ahead and looked into the apothecary. He found no dried lampreys suspended there, nor any turtle shells exhibited. Nor did he see that old-fashioned anatomical model of the human body, the abdomen hollowed out to reveal its internal organs in various colors, each set on a shelf fixed into the torso. And of course there was no elderly bearded man inside bearing any resemblance to the retired priest at Ipponji Temple.