As I have said in the preface to the Snap Shots, my hunting and shooting career began in Japan in the early 1950s when I was 13 years old. I became a passionate hunter and not only got my first shotgun at that time, but also acquired a dog which I trained myself for hunting. Robin, my cocker spaniel, was possibly the best hunting dog that I ever had, and I have had the good fortune to have shared my hunting days with some outstanding bird dogs. I have already blogged earlier on one of my failed attempts to train a bird dog, "Stenka," the wild pointer that we had on Okinawa in 1966. I have also seen some outstanding and not so good bird dogs that belonged to others, people with whom I shared the hunting fields.
In Japan I was taken hunting by a very good family friend, an unofficial "uncle" who was a superb shot and outdoorsman. He had an English pointer that had a very good nose, but wasn't all that great because he was not well trained. He did not retrieve downed birds, as is often the case with partially trained bird dogs, especially pointers. The other person who took me hunting was my uncle from our Japanese side of the family. We met him for the first time when we came to Japan. He was an avid hunter, so much so that he used to take time off his business during the hunting season and leave the work to his subordinates so he could go hunting uninterrupted!
My uncle took me all over Japan, or I should say, all over Honshu. We mostly travelled by car, but sometimes, for very long trips, we would take a train. He had excellent bird dogs, both pointers and setters that were completely "broken," i.e., trained to do everything, pointing, retrieving, etc. My uncle would normally just take me, and it would be just the two of us. Sometimes he would invite a business associate or another friend, but mostly it was just us. The one friend that accompanied us most often was an older man, my uncle's best friend. Mano-san owned a specialty restaurant in Shinbashi, near Ginza. His restaurant was well known and it specialized in food that was made from game - pheasant, duck, boar, deer, etc. Apparently it was a family business that his grandfather had started when Tokyo was still called Edo. Naturally, Mano-san was an avid hunter as well, since his restaurant was dependent on game for making food!
In the 1950s when I knew him, Mano-san was in his late 50s, a good ten years older than my uncle. To me, he was ancient! Although Mano-san loved hunting and hunting dogs, he was not a very good hunter nor a good shot, and his dogs were never any good. Mano-san had a thing for English setters. He had a beautiful English setter that he called "Prince," that according to him was the only proper name for such a distinguished, pedigreed dog. Prince, according to my uncle, lived in Mano-san's house, a house that was completely Japanese style with tatami floors! My uncle said that Mano-san had to change the expensive tatami in his house every year, sometimes even twice a year! His dog was completely spoiled, got tired in the field and refused to hunt after a while. It would whine and just walk along next to Mano-san rather than cast about and hunt, like he was supposed to.
On one particular hunt, when I shot my very first Japanese pheasant (kiji), we were hunting in Ibaraki Prefecture near a village called Ota. I happened to end up hunting with Mano-san and his Prince while my uncle was not far away with his excellent setter, "Bess." Prince was "done-in," it was in the afternoon and he was pooped. He sort of shuffled along side of Mano-san who kept talking to him in baby-talk, asking him if he was O.K., etc. We would not have gotten anything with Prince, fortunately, my little cocker Robin, despite the fact that he was only a year old, tried his best to find a pheasant. Robin happened to be in front of Mano-san who was 10 to 15 yards to my right, when he flushed a pheasant. The Japanese green pheasant cock exploded from the bush where he was hiding and cackled loudly in protest as he made his getaway. Mano-san, shot twice with no effect, just speeded up the pheasant who crossed right in front of me. I was so excited that I could hardly contain myself as I fired my gun, and lo and behold, the pheasant fell after my last shot. Robin was on it in a flash and brought the large bird to me, which he practically had to drag. That was a red letter day for me, my first pheasant, and it was Robin's first pheasant as well.
In 1979 I returned to Tokyo, to work at the US Embassy and reunited with my uncle. Of course I had seen him through the years when he came visiting (actually he came to the states to play golf!).
I went through the complicated process in Japan (a two day test!) for hunting license and paid a small fortune in fees! My uncle once again tried to take me back to all the places that we used to hunt when I was a kid. It was a fascinating and at the same time emotional experience for me. Japan had changed a lot, yet it was the same in the countryside! My uncle was in his 60s and could no longer scramble around those steep hills like he used to, so we took it slow and easy. On one of the last hunts that we made in Japan, he invited his old friend Mano-san to join us. Mano-san came without a gun, said he could no longer carry a gun, that it was too heavy. But he had his English setter, a direct descendant of the Prince that I met long time ago! This one was also called Prince (turns out he called all his dogs Prince, since they were all descendants of the same dog!) and it was the great-grandson of the dog I met some 25 years earlier.
True to form, Prince number four was really no different than his ancestor. Physically he looked remarkably similar to the Prince of long ago, and he also was not much of a hunter, just like his great-granddaddy! But, it didn't matter! It was wonderful to see Mano-san again. He seemed a lot smaller and more frail than I remembered him. He was never a big man, but somehow he seemed to have shrunk over the years.
Just as he had done with all his dogs, Mano-san allowed the latest Prince to live inside the house, on the tatami floor. My uncle said laughingly that Mano-san was still replacing tatami every year or sometimes more often. Good thing he was wealthy because it was not cheap to change tatami so often!
Although Mano-san appeared frail, his mind seemed to be sharp and clear. He was genuinely pleased to see me again as I was to see him! He kept saying how time had passed so quickly and how he remembered to this day when I shot my first pheasant. His memory in that regard was remarkably accurate. He kept recounting how he had given a "two shot salute" to the departing pheasant and how I had shot and dropped it. His memory was very good for that part. Where it got somewhat fuzzy was when he recalled how his Prince had made a picture perfect point to locate the pheasant and how Prince had retrieved it perfectly after I shot it. As I said, Robin had flushed the bird and retrieved it. Prince was nowhere in the vicinity! Oh well, if Mano-san chose to have selective memory when it came to his beloved Prince, so be it!
I left Japan and while I was in Greece a year later, heard from my uncle that Mano-san had died in his sleep. He was 87 or 88 years old, my uncle wasn't sure because he said Mano-san never told him his age! Whatever the case may be, I am sure Mano-san is enjoying observing his beloved Princes performing flawlessly in the great Happy Hunting Grounds in the sky!
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