Zary Fekete ~ On the Umbrella

It is dif­fi­cult to despair com­plete­ly while hold­ing an umbrella.

A small house of ribs and fab­ric, sprung open with a click, lift­ed like a mod­est crown above the head. In Tokyo where I live, they are every­where: out­side sta­tions in neat racks, lean­ing like a for­est at con­ve­nience store entrances, for­got­ten in the cor­ners of trains. On a wet day they bloom across inter­sec­tions like chrysan­the­mums, bob­bing polite­ly past one anoth­er with­out collision.

The umbrel­la is the most com­mu­nal of pos­ses­sions here. Everyone has one. Everyone los­es one. Everyone knows the faint betray­al of return­ing to the rack and find­ing theirs gone, only to take anoth­er iden­ti­cal trans­par­ent one in silent exchange. Ownership dilutes in the rain. The umbrel­la becomes part of the city itself…shared, bor­rowed, shrugged into the gray flow.

The polite­ness of Tokyo extends even into rain. People hold their umbrel­las slight­ly tilt­ed, mind­ful not to scrape another’s face with the ribs. They col­lapse them before enter­ing a shop, leav­ing small pud­dles near the entrance, nev­er com­plain­ing. Trains car­ry dozens at a time, propped at angles, drip­ping gen­tly onto the floor. It is a chore­og­ra­phy of accom­mo­da­tion, a qui­et bal­let in plas­tic and water.

When I first moved here, I learned the word ame for rain. It falls often in Tokyo…steady, sea­son­al, shap­ing the cal­en­dar. June’s tsuyu sea­son turns the air into a slow steam bath. Autumn rains paint the pave­ments with leaves. Typhoons arrive with extrav­a­gant dra­ma, top­pling signs, flood­ing rivers, yet always leav­ing behind calm skies as though noth­ing had happened.

History, too, has been soaked here. Old wood­block prints show women in kimono walk­ing under oil-paper umbrel­las, rain slant­i­ng like lines from an invis­i­ble brush. Samurai once car­ried their own, sta­tus marked not only by sword but by the lac­quered canopy above them. Even now, the umbrel­la car­ries a faint echo of cer­e­mo­ny, a small shield between human and heaven.

I remem­ber one morn­ing, walk­ing along the Sakai River as rain poured steadi­ly. The path was lined with oth­ers like me, each under a trans­par­ent dome, each iso­lat­ed yet vis­i­ble. Through the mist­ed plas­tic, the world blurred into watercolor…bridges dis­solv­ing into gray, trees bend­ing, the riv­er run­ning black with storm. Yet we moved for­ward togeth­er, a colony of small plan­ets orbit­ing along the same path. There was some­thing holy in it: not the keep­ing dry, but the act of mov­ing polite­ly, qui­et­ly, under the storm.

Today, as the sky dark­ens and the rain begins, I think about the bridge too far, the moment too heavy, the voice too sharp. I think about how many storms I had no shield against. And then I reach for the umbrel­la by the door. Transparent, cracked, ordinary.

I press the but­ton, hear the small gasp of the fab­ric stretch­ing, and I step out into the rain.

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novel­la (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short sto­ry col­lec­tion (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, pod­casts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky: zaryfekete.bsky.social