Junichiro

Diary

Junichiro, first son of a line that once measured breath itself before drawing a blade, decided charisma was simply another discipline to be mastered, so he stood before the shoji doors of the old teahouse and began shouting obscenities at passing women, cataloguing each flinch and gasp like a swordsman grading form. He nodded approvingly at his own volume, dissatisfied only that his enunciation on certain curses lacked the crispness his father would have demanded, and made a mental note to drill the consonants at dawn. To Junichiro this was not chaos but curriculum, the shoji panels rattling in their frames like disciples too slow to keep pace with his genius, and he has now resolved to open a dojo for degens, certain his flawless technique of insult and swagger can be transmitted to lesser men in a single sacred afternoon. Privately, beneath the pride, he suspects no student will ever measure up to the impossible bar he sets, least of all himself, but he would rather perfect the art of shouting at strangers than admit that discipline abandoned him somewhere between the war and the sake cup. Still he bows to the doors each morning, exacting as ever, grading his own performance an ungenerous seven out of ten.