Red Lights in the Burnt Ruins 1945-1955 The Bookkeeper's Daughter Speaks of Peddling and the Pride of Her Business

Red Lights in the Burnt Ruins 1945-1955 The Bookkeeper's Daughter Speaks of Peddling and the Pride of Her Business

The narrative on p. 157 of "The Code of the Tekiya" tells us in a breath what kind of ethics and emotions supported the family's business that walked at the bottom of the postwar life. It was a job at the end of the distribution chain.

The rationing system continued from the end of the war to the reconstruction period, but there were many late deliveries and shortages, and people had to resort to buying and the black market to make up for the shortages. In such chaos, markets of street stalls and vendors sprang up in front of train stations and in vacant lots in the burned-out ruins, and these became places where food and daily necessities were delivered. On the other hand, it was also a realistic mechanism to connect people's lives.

The narrator's family makes a living by selling artificial flowers and hozuki (Japanese hollyhock) in the summer and dolls in the winter, changing their products according to the seasons. The postwar revival of events that were interrupted during the war also coincides with a sense of recovery.

There is a scene in which the father avoids being a vendor because he is not confident in the quality of his dolls, and it is not a simple story of selling anything for a living. It is a sense that in times of scarcity, the quality of an object becomes the face of its creator.

On the other hand, my mother deals with bargain-hungry goods with dignity, and bargaining is not just a tactic, but is part of the atmosphere of the postwar era, when household budgets were tight and bargaining was a part of daily life. It is supported by a sense of public-spiritedness.

The family's business is not as rough and tumble as the world of street stalls, but more sincere and close to the festival culture. Selling dolls is more than selling a tool of daily life, it is also handing over a dream or a commemorative object. The father's hesitation and the mother's elegance will be engraved in the daughter's memory as the family's pride.

In the postwar city, the black market and street market expanded and supported people's lives while wavering between the government's tacit approval and the pressure of consolidation, as studies and public exhibition commentaries have pointed out.

The pride depicted here is not a pretty sight, but the strength of the reality of living with scarcity, devising goods, adapting to the situation, dealing with customers, and saving one's own face. Like the red color of cherries on the burnt ruins overlapping with the red of cherries on the ground, this story quietly illuminates the breath of the city in the age of reconstruction.