January 5, 2015
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Massan Plot Summary - Week 14
#79 As you may remember, Massan has been demoted from head of the distillery to financial management. Kamoi is in business to make money, not to subsidize Massan's bottled art. The customers are the ones who ultimately define what is good whiskey. He challenges Massan to go out and find customers who will buy what he produces. Massan says fair enough and sets out for Hokkaido, which has a climate similar enough to Scotland to provide a potential market. Ellie worries that Massan may be a better brewer than salesman, but after all, he has a family and a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, so off he goes with a wooden crate backpack full of bottles. Back at home the neighbors are gathered for tea when a letter arrives from Hiroshima. Katherine is on hand to read it for Ellie, "MIL is dying." (Times like this are why you learn to read things yourself.) Ellie heads for Hiroshima and Kamoi tries to contact Massan.
#80 MIL really was sick with a high fever and racking cough. Even though the local Doctor has pulled her through, she still has to take care. Ellie arrives and MIL says that now she really is going to die. Where's Massan? In Hokkaido selling whiskey. Oh, Kamoi's company will go belly up, so why don't the three of you just come back to Hiroshima? And get some goodies for the kid. Ellie makes a hot toddy for MIL's cough, but MIL says since it contains whiskey it will taste horrible. She chokes down a couple of sips then drains the glass and eats the lemons. Meanwhile, Massan has found not a customer, but does meet up with a fellow named Morino Kumatora (translated punnishly as Bear-tiger Von Deforest) who is going to change his destiny.
#81 Ellie and MIL finally become friends after a fashion. MIL says that when she first saw Ellie she thought Ellie was a witch with her white skin and blonde hair, and Ellie jokes back that she thought MIL was a devil. Ellie realizes that everything came out of MIL's love for Massan, and tells MIL that she will always work on trying harder to be a good wife to him. MIL admits that she has never been out of Hiroshima and recognizes Ellie's efforts in leaving her own country and learning the ways of a new one. Ellie says that when MIL gets better she can go and visit Scotland if she likes, and even teaches her a bit of English. MIL asks Ellie what attracted her to her idiot son, and Ellie says it was his tenacity and absent mindedness. MIL begins coughing again and returns to bed. Meanwhile, Massan and Morino finally reach Yoichi in Hokkaido. Morino runs a fishing business and employs seasonal workers who catch and process sardines. The season's work is finished, and Morino breaks open a barrel of sake and after a rousing chorus of Soran Bushi it's drinks for all! We also meet Morino's daughter Hana, who is a schoolteacher.
#82 Morino's seasonal herring workers continue the party. Massan offers everyone a sample of his authentic whiskey and tells them what they have been drinking up until now is a poor imitation. The real thing is booed all around as um, unpalatable. (In their well-oiled condition can they pass proper judgement on anything?) Morino says that he will buy all of the whiskey that Massan has dragged from Osaka. Everyone falls asleep where they are on the floor and next morning Massan heads for the outhouse. In mid-pee he looks out the window and is amazed at the scenery. He runs out to the middle of a luckily shallow river and tastes the clear water, and also finds that he can harvest peat. Morino tells him that Hokkaido is the ideal place for anyone to start over, and if he needs any help to just ask. Meanwhile Ellie continues to nurse MIL who has no spoken lines in this installment. It doesn't look good. Massan finally reports in to Kamoi's office and gets the message that his mother is doing poorly.
#83 Massan is on a train for the long journey back to Hiroshima, and memories of his dying mother come to mind. As a child his mother told him never to come back home without winning a fight and never to give up on anything. He has become just the kind of person that she told him to be, overcoming obstacles instead of running away from them. MIL is coughing up blood, and the doctor says that she may not last until the next morning. She refuses the doctor's medicine and asks for another of Ellie's hot toddies. Sister Chikako brings our a beautiful bridal kimono and tells Ellie to put it on. When Massan gets back MIL is finally ready to bless the marriage.
#84 MIL says her thanks and goodbyes to FIL, and Ellie enters the sickroom dressed in a bridal kimono courtesy of sister Chikako. Massan finally rushes in. Everyone is crying as MIL says what a pretty bride Ellie is. MIL says that she wishes that she had be born a man so she could have run the family sake business, but as a woman she was not even allowed to enter the brewery. But have courage, the time will come when women are allowed to work and state their opinions! MIL finally realizes that all people are the same and that Ellie is the best wife in all Japan, no, make that in all the world. She tells Ellie to take care of Massan, and oh, how his eyes sparkle when he talks about whiskey. Her last words (Auld Lang Syne is playing in the background.) are that whiskey tastes awful, and thank you and good bye in English. What a waste and a pity that she could not have said all of this earlier! She dies in Massan's arms. Massan is a bit crushed about his mother's deathbed pronouncement on whiskey, but Ellie tells him that she really meant to encourage him to make the best whiskey in the world. Massan vows to redouble his efforts. Next week's preview implies that he will try working with Kamoi again, but that is will not go well.
