Descending Stories

This chapter opens with the arrival of the yoling master, who introduces himself as "your big brother" and tells the story of how he came to be the master of the house. The master explains that he was born into the profession of performing rakugo, a Japanese art form. He tells the boy that he heard a bell on a hillside and prayed for the bones of a man who had died in the war. The sound of the bell startled the boy and he left the reeds to find the skull of the dead man. The boy says that the sound is the best he has ever heard, and that he wishes he could go back to the country and perform the art, but he knows that he will never be able to do so. He says that he used to live in the country, but that the war made it impossible for him to do the art. He works at a factory in the city, and when the war ended, he and the boy returned home.