One Fox in Ten Thousand

The stage moves past Rabbit Village to Dog Village. Not long ago this was a quiet town: ditches and alleys swept clean, carts pulled aside, neighbours calling to one another across the street.

That air has changed. In the quarter where rabbits gather, vegetable scraps collect at the mouth of the alley; rabbits work without permits under the names "apprentice" and "training"; huts hung with "in training" signs fill up with sleeping mats. Each disorder is small on its own, yet each arrives in someone's day as a concrete nuisance. The broadsheets bundle them into "trouble from the rabbits again," and a local irritation is raised into a village-wide "rabbit problem."

Into this steps Souhei, a fox who runs Souhei-ya. In a plain cotton haori he takes questions on the street and calms the village: among those who travel, he says, all but one in ten thousand keep the law. Then he gives himself that same number — he is the one in ten thousand. The next morning a black-lacquered carriage carries the interviewer to his main shop, where a very differently dressed Souhei is waiting with an imported gold pocket watch.

The interviewer begins to ask who actually lives in the houses Souhei-ya manages. In a rented row beyond the rabbit quarter, an elderly dog couple have received a notice: a new owner's name, the rent doubled, and a date at the end of the month by which they must be out. The emptied house is measured again — this time in sleeping places — and within days it is an inn. Carts block the narrow alley, voices carry through the walls at night, and the morning's rubbish goes uncollected. What the residents of Dog Village are left holding is the housing they lost and the noise.

Meanwhile — Usazo and his family are still walking, outside the walls.