This story in the original Japanese can be found here.
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Parrot —A Memory of the Great Earthquake—
This is nothing more than how I remember it. I am publishing it as is because I do not have an overabundance of spare time. Or perhaps because I do not have an overabundance of feelings aside from these. And yet I do not even have a half-meaningless excuse for publishing them as is. September 14th, 1923 journal entry.
A playwright living in Honjin-Yokoami. His name was Kane Daifu. He was sixty-three years old. He lived with his seventeen-year-old granddaughter.
Though their house had not been destroyed in the earthquake, there were of course fires all over the neighborhood. With his granddaughter he had fled the area to nearby Ryūgoku. All they took with them was their parrot’s cage. The parrot’s name was Gorō. His back was gray, and his belly was pink. His only talent was saying, “Indee!” (his approximation of indeed) with the sound of the craftsman’s mallet.
While they were leaving Ningyō he at one point became separated from his granddaughter. Although he was worried he had no time to spare. There were criss-crossing waves of humanity. Mountains of luggage. He saw a woman holding a canary basket. The clothes of someone who might have been a madam. “I thought there were people who looked like us, too,” he said. That was the scope of what he saw.
He made for Yoroibashi. There were fires on one side of the neighborhood. His face inclined in that direction was so hot it seemed as though it was on fire. And when he thought that something fell, it was the lead covering on the electrical wires which had melted due to the heat. He was pushed up against even more people here, and occasionally he thought that the parrot’s cage had been crushed. The parrot squawked madly without end.
Leaving for Maru-no-uchi, he saw smoke rising in the skies above Hibiya. The police department and the Imperial Theatre were burning. At last he came to the foot of the statue of Kusunoki near the Imperial Palace. Even sitting upon the grass he could not help but think of his granddaughter. He called his granddaughter’s name while scanning the refugees. Dusk. At last he laid down in the shadow of a pine. Next to him was a stockbroker accompanied by several clerks. Due to the smoke, the sky was crimson as far as he could see. “Indee!” said the parrot suddenly.
The next day he searched all over, from Maru-no-uchi to Hibiya, for his granddaughter. “She wouldn’t have felt the urge to return to Ningyō or Ryūgoku,” he said. After noon he remembered his keen hunger and thirst. Reluctantly he took some water from Hibiya Pond. In the end he did not find his granddaughter. At night he again laid down upon the grass in Maru-no-uchi. He thought that nobody would steal his parrot’s basket if he used it as a pillow. He saw hungry refugees eating ducks out of the pond, and he still saw the glow of the flames.
Three days later he gave up hope and he was about ready to ask about a nephew in Shinjuku. When going from Sakurada to Hanzōmon, he heard that Shinjuku was again ablaze, he thought that he might inquire at a family temple in Yanaka. His hunger became greater and greater. “I couldn’t bear to kill him, but maybe if he fell over I might eat him,” he said. On the way to Kudan-ue he finally acquired a quantity of rice from a civil service-looking fellow and crunched on it raw. Then, thinking carefully, with the parrot’s cage in hand he sought the help of the family temple. That is, feeding the remaining grains to the parrot, he released it towards the side of the Kudan-ue moat. At nightfall, he arrived at the Yanaka temple. The priest said kindly that he had been there for several days.
On the morning of the fifth day, he arrived at my house. He said he still did not know where his granddaughter had gone. The spirited old playwright was so emaciated he could not think.
Addendum. It seems that his nephew’s house in Shinjuku did not burn. His granddaughter sought refuge there.