Many years ago I wrote a story for a sporting journal that was called "The Shigi Hunter." The character of the story, a Japanese businessman/hunter, was a composite of several people that I knew, but mainly it was about a person that I knew when I was a kid and lived in Tokyo.
I knew him as Mano-san. He was in his 50s when I first met him in the 1950s. My uncle, a Japanese businessman who took me hunting when I was a kid, was a good friend of Mano-san who often accompanied us on our hunting trips. I had many memorable hunting trips to various region of Japan. Thanks to my uncle who took me all over, I got to see parts of Japan that I would not have seen otherwise.
At that time Mano-san owned a restaurant in a prime location in Shinbashi in Tokyo. Mano-san's restaurant was well known, and it specialized in wild game. I ate there once, and the food was fabulous, all made of various game meats. Mano-san's favorite was shigi, Japanese for snipe, and he preferred snipe over all other game. That is how I got the idea for the story "The Shigi Hunter." However, it was actually my uncle who was more of a "shigi hunter" than Mano-san. As much as Mano-san loved hunting, he was not much of a hunter. He loved his hunting dogs, all beautiful English setters. He had a huge male English setter that he called "Prince." My uncle told me that all his male setters were named Prince and they were all descendants of the first Prince that Mano-san had before World War Two!
Despite his relative wealth, Mano-san lived in a fairly modest house, a typical Japanese style house with tatami floors. Mano-san let his dogs on the tatami floors! He had to change the tatami frequently, costing him a pretty penny. But he didn't seem to mind, he absolutely adored his setters.
I shot my first kiji, Japanese green pheasant, when I was fourteen. It was at a place called Ito in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. Mano-san was on that hunting trip and he had his Prince with him. It happened that I was with Mano-san at the time. My cocker spaniel Robin flushed the pheasant while Mano-san's Prince was puttering around nearby. Mano-san shot first, emptied both barrels, but failed to hit the bird. As the bird crossed my path, I managed to hit it and it fell. Robin retrieved the bird to me. Naturally I was thrilled. It was my first pheasant ever, and I shot it after my dog Robin had flushed it and completed the whole thing by retrieving it to me. Despite the fact that he had missed the bird, Mano-san was genuinely pleased for me, I could tell, as he smiled broadly and kept saying that I made a very good shot. He was that kind of a person.
I had the pheasant mounted by a taxidermist, and it traveled with me to Okinawa when we moved to that island. Later I gave away that stuffed bird before I left Okinawa , thinking it was damaged by insects. Imagine my surprise when I discovered it sitting by the cash register at Pizza House in Oyama in 1981! Apparently the bird was salvaged by the man who took it and later sold to the Pizza House! I can only wonder if it is still there!
Anyway, to get back to Mano-san......when I returned to Tokyo in 1979 to work at our Embassy, I naturally contacted my uncle and we tried to make a few hunting trips as before. My uncle tried to take me back to all of the places we had been before, when I was a kid. It was quite an experience. On one such trip to Shizuoka peninsula, my uncle invited his old friend Mano-san to come along. As I mentioned earlier, Mano-san was in his 50s when I hunted with him back in 1950s, now he was in his 80s! He was still spry and seemed to be in excellent health. He also had another Prince, I don't know if this was Prince number 5 or 6, but it was a direct descendant of the Prince that I knew back in the 1950s. I believe this one was a great-grandson of the Prince I knew. Mano-san no longer hunted with a gun, but he liked to still go out in the fresh air and watch his beloved dog romp about.
Like all his ancestors, this one was a beautiful English setter. It was a good natured dog, but tired easily because it was not in condition, and like all its ancestors, not much of a hunter. It is surprising that Mano-san who loved hunting so much could never get himself a good hunting dog! But, it was obvious that he adored this Prince just as he adored all of the predecessors.
I was very pleased to see Mano-san after some 25 years. Mano-san in turn seemed to be very pleased to see me and kept talking about how excited I was when I shot my first pheasant. He seemed to remember everything so clearly, like it was just yesterday, except for one thing. He seemed to disremember what his old Prince was like. He insisted that his Prince had made a classic point pinning the pheasant and afterwards, after I shot it, had retrieved it perfectly to his hand. Of course that was not what happened. As I said, Prince was pottering about nearby when my cocker Robin flushed the pheasant and it was Robin who retrieved the bird to hand, to my hand!
But be that as it may, it was wonderful to see Mano-san again, and for the last time. A few years later, when I was in Greece, I heard that Mano-san had died peacefully in bed with his last Prince sleeping next to him.
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