A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto

Eiko’s heart attack, and the presence of a cold front even less. He decided to banish the magazine article to the back of his mind.
    On 1 September there was no earthquake.
    One Sunday in the middle of September, a member of Eiko’s haiku circle turned up to deliver a copy of the Haiku Association’s newsletter. Mieko Suzuki was the woman who had encouraged Eiko to join – one of her old school friends.
    Written on the cover page of the newsletter was the title “Eiko Asai Memorial Collection”.
    After paying her respects at the family’s Buddhist altar, Ms Suzuki explained about the special collection.
    â€œOur teacher selected around fifty poems out of the hundred and fifty or so that Eiko had composed,” she explained.
    â€œEiko wrote a hundred and fifty haiku?”
    Asai’s lack of interest in haiku meant that he’d never paid any attention to the poems his wife had written. He’d felt the same way about the singing and the painting lessons, and hadn’t realized that his wife had been such a prolific writer.
    â€œIt was a case of quantity over quality, I imagine,” he said.
    â€œNo. Absolutely not. They were true works of art. If only she’d lived longer, she’d have ended up with a body of work that none of us could have held a candle to. Our teacher was truly devastated by her death. It’s not flattery – it’s the truth.”
    â€œI’m sure Eiko would have been happy to hear that.”
    Asai began to flick through the magazine. The memorial collection appeared right at the beginning, arranged by date of composition, and spanned the last two years.
    Asai stopped at two of the most recent poems: “Solemn Somin Shorai and the spring cow” and “ The blossoming light of the golden Yamaga lantern” . He looked puzzled.
    â€œWhat do these two titles mean?”
    â€œSomin Shorai is the name of a god who protects against evil. The haiku was written about a kind of amulet that you can get from a temple. This one is a little hexagonal tower, carved out of wood and bearing Somin Shorai’s name. Apparently it’s hand-painted and very delicate. Depending on the region it comes from, the shapes, sizes and designs of these amulets are different. But they all have a solemn or majestic quality.”
    â€œIs it a religious artefact?”
    â€œMore like a kind of talisman.”
    â€œWhat about the spring cow?”
    â€œThere was a cow in the temple grounds where she got the talisman. The contrast between the solemn talisman and the laid-back cow in the springtime was amusing.”
    â€œIs there a temple like that in or around Tokyo?”
    Eiko had taken part in tours that visited famous spots, seeking inspiration for her poetry. She’d often wandered around by herself too.
    â€œHmm. I’m not sure. I’ve never heard of a place like that, but it might not be real. It might be a landscape that she imagined in her poem.”
    â€œAnd what’s the Yamaga lantern in this other poem?”
    â€œYamaga is a hot-spring resort in Kumamoto Prefecture. Since olden days they’ve had a custom of making lanterns out of paper and offering them at the local shrine. But these are not just any old lanterns – they’re elaborate palaces and castles, sometimes theatre sets, all made completely out of paper. She wrote ‘golden’, so that particular lantern must have been constructed from gold-leaf paper. I may have heard her mention it was a souvenir from a trip to Yamaga. I believe that’s what she told the teacher when she submitted the poem.”
    â€œI don’t think Eiko ever visited the Kyushu area.”
    â€œThen she must have seen it somewhere else. Perhaps she went to a department store when they had a special exhibit of products from Kyushu or something. She saw the gold-coloured lantern with the flower pattern and it gave her the idea of the blossoming light. This