Duck Hunt
The final time I had the pleasure of Mr. Ōmachi Keigetsu’s acquaintance was when we went duck hunting with the gentlemen Kosugi Hōan, Kōjiri Tanesuke, and Ishikawa Torakichi on the seas near Shinagawa in January of 1924. We all gathered early in the morning at a boathouse near Ichi-no-hashi in Honjo, I remember that we had a motorboat prepared and we went down the river. Kosugi and Kōjiri were both distinguished hunters. Furthermore, it was said that our boatman was also a famous duck hunter. And even though we had three expert animal massacring sinners with us, that day we could not get a single duck. Regardless of the ducks or the cormorant, the birds which had come to the sea all took off as soon as they sighted our boat. Mr. Keigetsu, appearing very happy at our inability to catch any ducks, said “Wonderful! The ducks of this age have learned to read, and so they’ve fled to areas marked ‘No Hunting!’” as he clapped his hands. Furthermore, because of his audacious laughing, with his dubious, hood-like hat perched upon his head, and his mustache dappled with drops of alcohol…just because of that the ducks had fled.
In this sort of situation, we were just buffeted by sea breezes for ten hours. We didn’t get a single duck. However, it appeared even Mr. Keigetsu, thrilled that we had not caught a duck, had sobered up a little when we once again reached the shore of Ichi-no-hashi. “I promised my kids I’d come back with two ducks, that’s probably something I have to do…I believe they were gonna give the ducks to their schoolteachers,” he blurted out. So we decided we had to go down to the coop and buy two ducks caught with birdlime. Whereupon Mr. Kosugi said, “They’ve probably gotta have gun wounds in ‘em, we wanna put a hole in each of them here?”
But Mr. Keigetsu, shaking his head childishly, said, “Well, there’s a whole lot ‘cause of this,” and, wrapping the birdlime-covered ducks in newspapers, took them home.