WHEN ISE LOBSTERS WERE AS SCARCE AS CRIMSON LEAVES IN SPRINGTIME

      DURING the New Year season it is customary to set out Horai decorations. But without Ise lobsters to top them, the celebration of the New Year seems incomplete. It occasionally happens, however, that the price of the lobsters rise so high that a poor man or a penny pincher has to celebrate the New Year without any.

      A few years ago, when the supply of bitter oranges was so short that a single orange cost four or five bu, many people substituted bergamot oranges, which were all right because they closely resemble bitter oranges in shape and color. But in the case of Ise lobsters, to use a prawn as a substitute would be no more fitting than to wear borrowed clothes.

      The man who lives in a lofty mansion and has a reputation to uphold often finds that the winds of the world blow against his house so much harder that ordinary straw matting cannot protect his walls from the rain. It is only natural for him to cover them with wainscoting painted with persimmon tannin mixed with lamp black. For him this is no luxury, but a necessity. It’s really no pleasure at all unless you eat, and dress, and live in a house in a style that accords with your means.

      I might add, incidentally, that very few men have ever succeeded, whatever their business, when they altered the inherited way of managing it and ventured on some new enterprise. It is better to take the advice of the old veterans. No matter how talented a young man may be, it often happens that in the end his advance calculations are completely frustrated.

      Now in Osaka the year-end scene resembles nothing so much as a treasure mart. People there are always complaining aloud that business has been bad. Actually, however, for the past sixty years they have never had to throw anything away because it hasn’t been sold. Even millstones, which last a lifetime and can even be passed on down to posterity, are sold so regularly every day, year in and year out, that there’s danger the very hills from which they are quarried will eventually disappear.

      If this be true of millstones, it seems only natural that such seasonal things as the offerings for the Obon Festival in July, the toy helmets used in the Boys’ Festival in .

      May, and the things used in celebration of the New Year-all of which last but a few days-should be prepared anew each year when the proper season rolls around. Gift fans presented by temples to their parishioners are thrown away without ever having been unwrapped. No one seems even to be conscious of such a wasteful way of living. Indeed, as free spenders the citizens of Osaka are second only to the people of Edo.

      Now this particular year of which I write it happened that everyone in the City, vowing that his New Year decorations would be incomplete without an Ise lobster, determined to buy one even if it cost a thousand kan. The result was that by December 27th or 28th the supply of Ise lobsters was so exhausted that in every fishmonger’s shop in Osaka they were as scarce as imported articles. And by New Year’s Eve not even a whiff of one was to be detected, high or low; all along the shore and in every fisherman’s hut you could hear the plaintive voices of buyers asking if there were any Ise lobsters for sale.

      At a fishmonger’s shop called the Era, located in the middle of Bingo Street in Osaka, there happened to be just one Ise lobster left. The bidding for it began at one and a half momme and finally rose to four momme and eight. Even at that exhorbitant price, however, the fish monger refused to part with it, claiming that its like could not be found anywhere else.

      Since it was far beyond the authority of a mere servant to buy it at such an inflated price on his own responsibility, he returned home hastily to his master and explained the situation. Whereupon the master frowned and said: “Never in my life have I bought anything that was too expensive. I make it a rule to buy firewood in June, cotton in August, rice before the sake-brewing season starts, and hemp just after the Bon season. In brief, my principle is to buy for cash when the price is cheapest. The only exception (and one which I have ever since remembered with regret) was made when my father died: I bought an expensive coffin at the price quoted by the cooper. There is no reason in the world why, willy-nilly, we should have to greet the New Year with an Ise lobster installed in our house. I’ll make up for Its absence this year by buying two of them next year when the price comes down to only three mon apiece. I don’t mind in the least if due to the absence of an Ise lobster the New Year god is reluctant to visit my house. No, not in the least! I wouldn’t buy one if the price were reduced to four momme-no, not even if it were only four bu!”

      Despite the master’s wry face, his wife and son both thought it just wouldn’t do at all to be without an Ise lobster. They could bear up under the thought of losing face publicly, but when the daughter’s husband would make his first New Year’s call on his wife’s parents and see no Ise lobster crowning the New Year decorations that scene was simply unthinkable. They must have one at any cost. Back went the servant posthaste, but he was too late, for another servant of a wholesaler from Imabashi had already bought the Ise lobster. The price quoted had been five momme and eight, but since it was appropriate to usher in the New Year with round figures, an even five hundred mon had been paid for it. The last lobster having been sold, then, all further forays of the servant to hunt lobsters were fruitless; so he had to return home, empty-handed, a sadder but wiser man, more conscious than ever of the great size of Osaka, and confess all to his master and mistress.

      The mistress looked sorrowful, but the master laughed and said: “I feel uneasy about any wholesaler who would buy a lobster at so fancy a price. He’s bound to go bankrupt before long. His financial backer, unaware of his real circumstances, is sure to have a nightmare over the holiday season. If a lobster is indispensable for the decoration, I have an idea for making one that will keep much longer than a live one.” So saying, he commissioned an artisan to fashion a lobster of crimson silk, which cost him only two and a half momme. “Look,” he pointed out, “it will be useful as a toy for the baby even after the season is all over. That’s the way a wise man does things. A thing that would have cost you four momme and eight has been provided for two and a half momme. And what’s more, it can be used over and over again.”