The Kimono Tailor

by Eric Dreyer Smith

The tailor was growing old. He did not fully admit this to himself. After all he could still wink at a pretty girl and work most of the day. His small town had always been his home. He had always been a tailor. He learned the trade from his father who in turn had learned it from his father.

This tailor was the first generation to make fancy things. During the last twenty years he had begun to specialize in the making of lovely kimonos. They were of the simple sort. The women of the town whose husbands had professions, ones that made more money than their mothers had known, were his usual customers. The silk he used for these kimonos was good, but not really great. He purchased it from a worm farmer who lived just outside of town.

The tailor’s life was a complicated grind. He had little room for error in his life. He constantly had to take into account expenses and profits. He never had time for fun things and a family of his own. He had not taught tailoring to anyone except himself.

It was not easy pleasing his customers, nor his landlord or his suppliers. The customers were often asking for extra qualities to be added to their kimonos. These were things he knew they could not afford. He was not about to add the cost to his supplies. His suppliers already withheld the extra nice materials. These were the ones he would have liked to acquire for the same purchase amount that he paid for the materials he currently used in his work. This seemed most fair to him. Things like better buttons should be sold to him. Buttons were a continuous frustration. One could not get enough useful buttons no matter how hard one tried.

The tailor had never made enough money to own his shop. His whole life he had given a good portion of his earnings to the landlord. He did not like the landlord. He did stop hating him though when he had reached forty-five years old.

There was one time of year that the tailor did something different from his demanding routine. He traveled by foot to the nearby city and sold five specially made luxury kimonos. These were very nice fashions. They were not the best, but still could command a greater price than any in his town could pay for them. Winter was the time he went to the bigger city because that was when they held their annual festival. It was at the festival that he was able to meet women who appreciated his finer kimonos. It was their husbands who were able to afford these better items because they lived in a bigger city that had more commerce.

This year he would take three blue, one yellow and one red luxury kimono. He packed the five kimonos carefully in his shoulder bag. He dressed warmly, combed his beard and drank some hot wine before setting out to the bigger city.

On his long walk he thought about things. He grew tired quickly this year and had to rest several times during the trek. He realized he was aging. He had no one to show his craft of tailoring. There was no one to pass on his knowledge and his father’s knowledge. Maybe he would have to budget for an apprentice. Someone who could one day even make these trips to the bigger city.

He had already gotten a late start on this journey. The frequent rests made it apparent that he would soon be traveling in the dark of night. There were not many people he passed on the road. The few who traveled in carts were of a higher station in life. It would not be appropriate to ask for a ride. This was the way of Japanese culture in the years between 1800 and 1900.

As the evening turned to black the tailor began to remember some game he played as a child. This particular portion of the road was ancient and strewn with decaying trees. The wind began to whistle through the bark and the black birds called. The temperatures dipped. The cold got colder. The old man remembered the game.

It was by sense and instinct with a small mixture of lore and prejudice that he spontaneously began playing the old childhood game. He skipped off the road and darting between trees. His body moved as if he needed to evade something that was pursuing him. He began to hide.

He went further and further off the road to where the dead trees grew thicker and the black birds call echoed. He skipped a light dance with his satchel of colorful kimono’s dangling at his side. He dashed from tree to tree – hunching his body for physical secrecy, wincing into the dark and almost at times giggling.

As he moved out from one dense grouping of trees across an open vista toward another shelter of branches, ever closer to the big city, he was found. The two brigades cut him down to the snow with fast swings of their stolen swords. They pulled violently on the satchel of beautiful kimonos until the luxury items became their own.

The tailor lay in the white snow, having lost the game, – he bled a red blood, too great an amount, – across the wet, powdery blanket beneath him and years went past, many years.
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