"The Old-Timer with the Cane Makes His Pitch"

Ladies and gentlemen, gather round and lend me your ears!

Where was I born? How was I raised? Never you mind. Home is up north in Japan's snow country. The name is Isamu Hibari — though folks just call me the Old-Timer with the Cane.

What's that? Three years shy of sixty, you say? Don't make me laugh! Here in Japan they'll dress you in a red vest at sixty like some guest of honor — but you can't scare me with that. I've been hobbling on this cane for a good twenty years. I'm a seasoned pro! Call me gramps, geezer, old man — it rolls right off, like water off a duck's back.

Now here's the main event, folks — step right up! Twenty-seven years ago, yours truly stood with one foot on the ferryman's boat, at the river you don't cross back over. But old Enma, the judge of the dead, flipped through his ledger and barked: "Not so fast, pal. You've got unfinished business down below!" And so back I came, tail between my legs.

Ever since, I've been living on borrowed time — overtime, bonus innings, call it what you like. And a man repays what he's been given. That's the code of an honest drifter. But repay whom? And with what?

Picture it: flat on my back in a hospital bed, the kindness of those nurses sinking clean to the bone. Then they sent me home — and hope drained out of me like air from a punctured tire. And that's when it arrived: from across the seas, all the way from Bohemia, the singing and the smiles of Czech girls. As if they were telling me: "Hey, you there — live!" That very day I made up my mind: this debt gets repaid to the women of the world.

But look at me — no Casanova, no Rockefeller. All I've got are these two hands and a craft I picked up in rehab. So step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and feast your eyes on these baskets! Strand by strand, warp and weft, woven with more heart than skill and more stubbornness than both! Genuine, guaranteed, one hundred percent handmade — the old-timer stakes his name on it!

Is it working? Is it reaching anyone? Heaven only knows. But here it is at last — three years shy of sixty, the shape of it finally complete.

And while I'm at it, a confession: I suffer from a condition no doctor can cure. I call it "Tora-san Syndrome" — after Tora-san, hero of Japan's best-loved film series, "Otoko wa Tsurai yo" ("It's Tough Being a Man"): a wandering peddler who falls head over heels in every picture and gets his heart broken in every one. That's me all over: fall, get dumped, fall again — and somewhere along the way, marrying age blew right past my window like an express train. There's no medicine for lovesickness — not in Japan, not anywhere on this earth.

So if my way of doing things looks fishy to you — I can't say I blame you. But this much I'll swear on anything you like: I have nothing — nothing! — to be ashamed of.

Sixty, seventy — what's the difference? As long as I'm breathing, I'm in this trade, and there's no quitting it now.
What's that? "Isn't it about time you settled down?"
— Ah-ah-ah! That, my friends, is the one thing you must never say. Say that — and the whole show is over!