The Firefly Tribe

In the evening the shadowed verandas of the large apartment block near my house are lit by the orange embers of cigarettes. They rise and fall, tracing wild arcs through the air to emphasize a thought, each inhalation marked by the flaring and dimming of the little glow. Sometimes there are ten or more at once, for the most part completely unaware of each other. It’s a common enough scene across the country that the Japanese have invented a wonderful word for it: hotaruzoku, the firefly tribe, smokers who choose or are exiled by families to the balconies. Sometimes the tribe has a voice as well, one hacking cough sounding in the darkness to be answered by another, slightly deeper. If it were blues or church singing it would be a beautiful call and response, but the effect is more like a flock of ill wading birds trying to find one another in the midst of a swamp fire.

I know all this because the hotaruzoku is one of the very few Japanese tribes I’ve gained full access to, and by far the easiest. It’s also the entirety of my interaction with those neighbors in the apartment block. There in the gloaming, I gaze thoughtfully through the intervening space at their indistinct outlines and they gaze thoughtfully back at me. Then we turn and go inside. And that is all. I’ll leave you now. Through the open window, my people are calling to me.