Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Kappabashi — there's this story that's been nagging at me. You know that kitchen supply street, just a short walk from Ueno, the one crammed with pots and knives and everything else... I can't say for certain it's true, so take it as nothing more than a rumour.
Someone told me they'd walked through Kappabashi alone at night. They'd stayed late at work, and by the time they were heading home it was ten o'clock, maybe later. During the day the street is so lively, but at night every shop pulls down its shutters and only the streetlamps burn, dim and pale, and the kappa statues — the souvenir ones — just stand there in the dark, exactly where they always are.
This was when the person passed in front of Sogenji.
Sogenji is the temple in Kappabashi that enshrines the Kappa Daimyojin. The legend goes that during the Edo period, a man named Kappaya Kihachi spent everything he had trying to hold back a flood, and the kappas — whose lives he had once saved — gathered in the dead of night and waded in among the workers, labouring beneath the water until the job was done. Because of them the work succeeded, and ever since, kappas have been venerated in this neighbourhood as guardian spirits of good fortune and trade.
There's also a story — told with great conviction — that the temple keeps a mummified kappa hand somewhere on the grounds. I've never heard from anyone who actually confirmed it.
Anyway. When this person passed the temple gates that night —
They stopped walking. Right there in the shadow of the wall, where the streetlamp light didn't reach. They couldn't explain why. The air had simply shifted — not cold, exactly, but damp. A smell like the bottom of a river rose up for just a moment. And this was the height of summer.
They told themselves it was nothing and tried to move on, but then they heard something from the other side of the wall.
The sound of water.
There's no water near there. The old irrigation channels have all been buried underground. And yet — drip, splash, drip — something was moving through a puddle, step by step, just on the other side of the wall.
Footsteps, maybe.
Frightened, the person looked up. And there on top of the wall, something was sitting. They thought at first it was a cat, but it was too large for a cat. It was crouched, and it was looking at them. The very top of its head caught the glow of the streetlamp and gleamed, wet and slick.
The moment their eyes met, there was a deep, hollow sound — like something dropping into water — and it was gone, down behind the wall.
After that, nothing. But when the person got home and looked at their hands, they found their palms were damp. Clammy, as though someone had been holding them. They had no memory of touching anything on the way.
Even now, kappa statues stand all along Kappabashi. In the daytime they look cheerful, almost charming. But at night, apparently, they all face the same direction. Toward Sogenji.
What exactly they're watching, no one knows.
