Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/51

Meanwhile marriage plans were being discussed. A couple who came from the same village as Kanako’s mother called separately on her parents with the suggestion that she should marry Sōichi, the father’s son by his first wife. Originally it had been intended that she should be the bride of Sōichi’s stepbrother, Shinichi (who was the wife’s son from her first marriage), and negotiations had gone on for some time between Kanako’s parents and Shinichi’s mother. Shinichi was a fairly pleasant young man. He often used to call at Kanako’s house with a bundle of clothes for repair and he would sit for hours discussing horses with her father, who was a great racing fan. Kanako came to know him quite well. Shinichi’s position as a shopkeeper was entirely to her taste and she grew used to the idea that in due course she would become his wife.

Then in the middle of it all Shinichi’s stepfather, Wasao, proposed to Kanako’s parents that she should instead marry his own son, Sōichi, who was three years younger than the stepbrother. Her parents made no objection. At first Kanako felt that she was somehow acting wrongly towards Shinichi, but since he did not seem to care particularly, she silently resigned herself to the new arrangement and exchanged the traditional betrothal cups with Sōichi, about whom she knew next to nothing.

Sōichi, who worked in a large clock factory where his father was a foreman, had recently come back from military service in Manchuria. Before entering the army, he had fallen in with a set of bad companions who were employed in the same factory under his father’s superintendence. Through their influence he had started gambling and had also visited bars and brothels. It was with the aim of having his son settle down that Wasao arranged for him to be married immediately on his return from Manchuria. There was no pressing need for his wife’s son, Shinichi, to get married and Wasao had therefore substituted Sōichi as Kanako’s bridegroom.

After the marriage the young couple moved into Wasao’s