Nureki Chimuo Archive

The stage at the Tsurukame Theater closes around nine o’clock at night. As soon as Master Fukunosuke returns to his dressing room, he removes his wig, takes off his costume, steps out into the hallway, and practically runs to the bathhouse.

He doesn’t actually take a bath, he just removes his makeup at the sink.

Nakajima-san, his attendant, and I would fill a basin with hot water and help him scrub off the thick paste of white powder applied to the back of his collar with soap.

I would hold the raised sides of his dressing gown high behind him.

His own reflection appeared in the wall mirror of the dimly lit washroom.

There stood the figure of a devoted disciple serving his revered onnagata master.

Seeing that, at that moment alone, Fukunosuke and I became one and being the disciple of a beautiful actor filled me with a feeling of joy and pride.

Fukunosuke, having washed his face, had Nakajima-san assist him as he prepared to leave.

Even offstage, he wore a kimono at all times and the routine was fixed, so his preparations were dizzyingly quick.

Fukunosuke and Nakajima-san stepped out together from the Tsurukame Theater dressing room, that is, the entrance on the first floor of the Tsurukame apartment building.

I also finished getting ready to leave and followed them out. It was a send-off.

Outside it was dark. It was an era of scarce electricity, so there were no streetlights.

It was a five minute walk to Kameari Station on the Joban Line.

After nine o’clock, the streets were deserted, and the area in front of the station was quiet and dark.

Not a single shop had its lights on for business.

As Fukunosuke and Nakajima-san cross over to the platform for trains bound for Ueno, I stop just before the ticket gate and bow to them respectfully.

Fukunosuke gave a slight nod in acknowledgement, while Nakajima-san said, “Thank you for your hard work,” acknowledging my seeing them off.

My home was in the opposite direction from theirs, so I pretended to head for the platform for trains going down, bound for Matsudo.

I only pretended. I didn’t actually go onto the platform.

I immediately turned back toward the Tsurukame apartment building.

I gently opened the glass door at the entrance, took off my shoes, held them in my hand, and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

The hallway was dark. The doors to the shared toilets lined up at the end and the kitchen area next to them was so dark I couldn’t see them.

Only one small light bulb illuminated the entire second-floor hallway. This darkness was my greatest ally.

Opening the door to the three sisters’ room, I hunched my back and slipped quickly inside.

The thrill of those few seconds was, as always, exhilarating.

I always moved as nimbly as a mouse, and the sisters found it amusing, skillfully catching me.

That’s why my intrusion never drew the attention of the second-floor residents.

Perhaps they only let me stay in their room to enjoy this thrill.

I had truly become a way for the sisters to pass the time back then, when they had nothing to do every day.

They would sneak food in for me, but for the bathroom I had to leave the room and carefully make my way to the toilet at the end of the hallway, making sure not to be seen.

Once, I tried to open the glass window and pee outside through it, but even that was stopped by Tamayo.

“Right below this window is Takenosuke-san’s dressing room. I think it’s okay since he’s not there at night, but please don’t do that.”

“I understand.” It was night, so the residents were all asleep.

Even so, I was cautious. I listened for footsteps in the hallway, for the sound of doors opening and closing, making sure no one was there before I held my breath and went to the restroom.

The restroom was a single stall for both business and pleasure, and of course it was unisex.

left.

If I sensed someone coming while I was in there, I held my breath and waited until they

Once the hallway was clear, I’d slip back out and quickly dive back into the sisters’ room.

I mentioned before there was no sexual contact, but with futons spread across the entire six-mat room and the three sisters sleeping piled on top of each other, there was no way my body wouldn’t touch theirs as I squeezed in.

Even if I had no sexual awareness, there I was, a sixteen year old stranger, sleeping all night long, rolling around and tossing and turning, surrounded by the bodies of women aged twenty-eight, twenty-one, and fifteen.

Objectively speaking, it’s no wonder that situation might have seemed to carry a sexual atmosphere.

To be more specific and explicit, we might have tangled limbs, embraced, kissed, groped each other’s crotches, or even experienced sexual pleasure equivalent to that of explicit acts, even without penetration into female genitalia, as was the common perception of men and women in that era. All four of us, each in our own way, might have savored that level of sexual pleasure.

No, I was different. No matter how hard I try to insist I had absolutely no such sexual awareness, perhaps it was actually present in my unconscious mind.No matter how hard I try to

insist that the only time I felt eroticism in this room was when I saw those thighs in the moonlight.

After all, we were raised in an era where, until just yesterday, we were subjected to militaristic education, forced to sing daily that no life was too precious to sacrifice for His Majesty the Emperor, where free interaction between men and women was deemed criminal, and where adultery, if discovered, meant going to prison.

Perhaps the three sisters and I were, at that very moment, in the midst of an unimaginable “sexual pleasure.”

And, to put it another way, was my existence at that time nothing more than a convenient “toy for sexual play” for the three sisters?

Thinking about it now, over sixty years later, I still feel that the quality of that “sexual pleasure” I felt back then was quite different from what I experience now.

We’ve become too “free” now.

When it comes to sex, we live in an era of excessive freedom.

Thanks to this freedom, no matter how intense or powerful the sexual act, I no longer feel profound pleasure.

To put it crudely and concretely, if pleasure means inserting a penis into a vagina and rubbing against each other all night long, then sometimes the sensation felt when the tips of fingers touch each other can be a stronger, more intense sexual pleasure than that.

So, was there truly some unimaginable, blissful sexual pleasure within those adventures my sisters and I conspired to play, becoming utterly absorbed in them?

There was, surely.

But then I think again.

I don’t remember getting an erection back then.

I never even thought about getting one.

That’s the strange part.

And this is part of the problem.

I also have no memory of fantasizing about their bodies and masturbating elsewhere.

I never even thought about doing such a thing.

Since I didn’t get an erection, I didn’t even think about masturbating.

Was my body simply immature as a man?

Or did I shrink back, intimidated by the multiple advances of three sisters?

No, that’s not it.

I had quite normal, mature sexual desires towards women other than the sisters.

In other words, I fantasized about other women and diligently (?) vigorously (?) sometimes fiercely (laugh) engaged in masturbation.

For example, the female factory workers wearing hinomaru headbands at the weapons manufacturing plant where I worked until just four months ago, and the schoolgirls brought in en masse from their schools, were my subjects.

Their pitiful faces, smeared with machine oil, were tantalizingly erotic.

Their lower halves, clad in baggy monpe pants, completely hid the shape of their butts, but ironically, that only fueled my fantasies.

I was a conceptual pervert.

I would strip these women naked in my imagination and masturbate. I did it quite frequently.

But the Nishiki sisters never appeared in those fantasies.

The sisters were more beautiful, more coquettish, and even more erotic than any of the women working in the weapons factory.

It wasn’t that I held them in such high regard that I couldn’t touch them.

Yet, they never became the subject of my fantasies.