The Samurai's Daughter

by Lesley Downer

  He bowed stiffly. Taka had wanted so badly to talk about this dreaded marriage with him; that was why she had summoned him, she remembered now. But now he was here she could hardly bear to think about it.

  ‘It’s not my doing. I have no choice in the matter,’ she said, staring at him wildly.

  ‘My lady your mother is good and kind and cares about you. She wouldn’t force you into marrying someone you don’t care for.’

  She sighed helplessly. Maybe he was right. He was two years older than her, he was an adult, and she’d always been taught that adults had all the answers. ‘She’s convinced herself it’s the best for me and that I’ll be happy in the end,’ she said miserably.

  There was a fizz and a bang and a lone firework exploded in the sky. In the momentary flash, she saw his face clearly lit in the garish light. He looked hungry, haunted.

  ‘So this is the only chance I’ll have to see you, my weaver princess,’ he said abruptly, in tones of yearning. She started. It was not at all what she had expected him to say. The waves lapping on the shore of the bay made a lonely sound. The hugeness of the sea, the black sky sprinkled with stars, spreading to infinity, made her feel tiny and lost and desolate.

  ‘When are you going back to the barracks?’ she asked, her voice shaking. She felt the weight of the amulet in her sleeve. ‘Will you come and see me once more?’

  A familiar pair of clogs clattered towards them across the graveyard – Okatsu, come to summon her home.

  Nobu took her hand in both of his and held it firmly.

  ‘I’ll find a way. I promise,’ he said.

  12

  NOBU WATCHED AS the two slight figures in their cotton yukatas pattered down the road, looking back again and again to bow. He waited until they merged into darkness, then turned slowly and set off on the long hike back to Mori’s house.

  Nobu was used to running after his master’s horse or behind his rickshaw; for him, walking was no hardship. Striding along the Eastern Sea Road beneath the Tanabata lanterns with their paper tails hanging limp in the humid air, he had time to think. Usually he rushed about incessantly while Bunkichi and Zenkichi kept up a non-stop flow of banter. It was a rare luxury to be on his own.

  There was something niggling at him, something that refused to be pushed to the back of his mind. Again and again his thoughts returned to the forty-eight tombstones, laid out in tidy rows in their enclosure, lit by pale strands of moonlight. They seemed to loom over him, gazing down in silent reproof, reminding him that he had committed an inexcusable offence: he had neglected his duty.

  He had told the thugs who had attacked Eijiro that the war was over, that talk of north and south was irrelevant now, but he had known very well that that was not the case. The Satsuma and their allies had taken all the government positions and all the good jobs while the men of Aizu and the northern clans were reduced to the lives of servants and rickshaw pullers. Truly, the men of the south had harnessed the eel of prosperity while the northerners – his people – had slithered off its tail. Even if he failed to avenge his clan and his family, at the very least he should not be consorting with a daughter of the enemy.

  The thought of Taka made him grimace in pain. He could still smell the perfume that scented her glossy hair. His thoughts lingered on the smooth oval of her face, her skin, soft and pale as pear blossom, her large solemn eyes that seemed to have grown darker and more fascinating since he’d seen her last, the graceful way she put her hands over her mouth and looked up shyly when she smiled.

  When he’d known her before they’d been children. She’d been a bashful fourteen-year-old, by turns boisterous and confident then blushing with embarrassment, living in a world of wealth and beauty while he, the poor servant, could only watch and admire from a distance. But then this sweet young girl had taken him under her wing, become his stern teacher while he was her gawky pupil. How could he not have become totally devoted to her? At the time he’d hardly understood his own feelings.

  Over the years they’d been apart, the devotion she had inspired had lessened to a dull ache. Her memory had lingered like a daydream, comforting him when life became unbearable. Seeing her had reawakened his yearning and turned it into a fever.

  There were so many reasons why he should forget her. She was beautiful and wealthy, that in itself put her out of his reach. Worst of all, she was Kitaoka’s daughter – Kitaoka, who had marched at the head of the southern armies and wrested Edo Castle out of northern hands by trickery, fooled the gullible northern leaders into handing it over without even a fight. She was not just unattainable; to desire her was to betray everything he believed in and cared for – his family, his clan, his honour. She’d bewitched him, he thought fiercely. He had to free himself.

  Suddenly enraged, he shook his head as if trying to shake off the spell she’d cast over him and punched his fist into his palm, shouting ‘Fool!’ at the top of his voice, oblivious to whoever might hear him. Breaking into a run, he sprinted towards the centre of the city, legs pumping, throat tight, furious at himself for his stupid infatuation and at her for trapping him like this, thinking he might be able to put her out of his mind if he ran fast enough.

  Bells boomed from the shadowy temples behind the trees. He pounded across New Bridge and along narrow streets lit with softly glowing lanterns in front of shuttered geisha houses, hearing ghostly singing and laughter and the clinking of sake cups from the pleasure boats that plied the canal. Pausing to catch his breath and wipe off the sweat that dripped into his eyes, he heard the harsh tones of southern brogue and scowled, remembering that the country’s overlords whiled away their nights in this part of town. He had been here once before with Mori and sat hugging his knees in the antechamber of one of the teahouses, watching the swaggering yokels grabbing at geishas’ skirts.

  Across another bridge gas lamps flared, lighting the sky. Even at this hour throngs of people ambled up and down, gawping at the garish brick and stone buildings that lined the Ginza. Nobu passed the sign outside the Black Peony restaurant and swung away abruptly, remembering that fateful day when he had burst in and met Taka and her family. They belonged to this harshly lit new world; but it was closed to him and he wanted no part of it.

  By the time he reached Mori’s house, he was soaked in sweat. The moon was high in the sky. He’d been away for hours. ‘Fool!’ he muttered again. Mori would be furious, he might even dismiss him, and Nobu badly needed the money to support his brothers.

  As he slid open the door, a wave of rancid air washed out, dank and sweaty. Bunkichi’s snores reverberated like a temple bell. Creeping in on tiptoe, Nobu stumbled over a large body. The man grunted and started to his feet.

  Even in the dark, Nobu knew him – Jubei, his brother Yasutaro’s ex-servant, a bluff giant who had been champion sumo wrestler of his village. Yasutaro had long since dismissed him – these days he couldn’t afford even one servant – but Jubei continued to visit and check on him and on Kenjiro.

  ‘Usss,’ Jubei grunted. Nobu grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the street. It was good to hear the rough northern greeting but the sight of him filled Nobu with alarm. Something must have happened to one of Nobu’s brothers and Jubei had come to fetch him but Nobu hadn’t been here. He’d been too caught up in his foolish adventure with this girl.

  ‘Your brother Kenjiro.’ Jubei crinkled his fleshy brow. ‘Seems poorly. Master Yasu is away so I came to look for you, sir.’

  Nobu grimaced. He would have to beg Mori for more time off. His only hope was that Shige, Mori’s mistress, would speak up on his behalf. He brushed a quick note to her, promising to be back by midday.

  They snatched a couple of hours’ sleep and set off before dawn, following the outer moat of the castle. The ramparts had been torn down, leaving an open expanse dotted with trees and clumps of tumbledown wall. The outer walls of the castle, visible now across the empty land, rose desolate against the sky.

  ‘Every day that passes, there’s more gone,’ said
Jubei, shaking his large head. It was true. The high walls that had lined the lanes, the mansions with their latticed windows where women used to peek out, the guardhouses, the tenements for the samurai guards, had all vanished. The new regime was set on demolishing everything Nobu had ever known or valued or cared for.

  Nobu’s brothers lived in a run-down district near the gate at Kanda Bridge, in a rented house. At one time it must have been part of a tenement where samurai lived, in the grounds of a daimyo’s palace, but the lacquered gates and splendid mansion had been destroyed in the civil war or torn down shortly afterwards. A rank smell of wood ash, sewage and rotting food tickled his nostrils. As they picked their way across the rubble, Nobu spotted the big iron cooking pot he’d bought for them, tucked under the eaves on a mound of rocks and tiles.

  Pushing the door back in its grooves, he nearly fell over Kenjiro, huddled on a thin futon in the middle of the room. The sweet musty smell of sickness hung about the place. Yasu was nowhere to be seen.

  Nobu crouched down and put his hand on Kenjiro’s brow. His brother’s eyes were jaundiced and his skin sallow and he was clammy and covered in sweat. He stared up at Nobu, his breath rasping noisily.

  ‘Usss,’ he croaked. ‘Younger Brother is it, and at this hour? You’ll be out of a job if you’re not careful.’ He tried to sit up and fell back, scowling in exasperation. ‘I need to get back to work myself.’

  ‘I’ll fetch you a drink.’ Nobu looked around for a water flask. The small room was neat and tidy, the thin rush mats on the wooden floor well swept. Kenjiro’s spectacles lay alongside brushes, ink stone, ink stick and paper on the low table where he did his writing, and there were books piled in heaps on the floor – Chinese classics, neatly bound, works by Saikaku, Bakin and other Japanese authors and even a couple of volumes in western languages. Nobu made out the titles: On the Origin of Species and Das Kapital. He wondered how Kenjiro had managed to acquire them when he had so little money. He probably saved his last mon to spend on books, or perhaps the barbarians he interpreted for gave them to him.

  He smiled to himself. Kenjiro was a prime exemplar of the proverb ‘Men of talent are prone to sickness and beautiful women destined to die young.’ Forever coming down with one ailment or another, he passed the time studying and with the help of a fellow Aizu samurai had learned English well enough to act as an interpreter. He’d been working for a couple of foreign technicians setting up a telegraph system in the provinces and had come down to Tokyo when the assignment ended; but, as they had all discovered, there were very few opportunities of any sort for a northerner, even one as bright as he was.

  Nobu poured Kenjiro a cup of water and found him a small rice-husk-filled pillow. Kenjiro sat up and seemed to rally a little. ‘Comment vont les études?’ he asked in clumsy French.

  Nobu grinned. ‘No time for études with the fighting dog nipping at my heels.’

  Kenjiro chuckled. ‘Ah, Mori, the Tosa fighting dog. Well, you’ll be back at the Military Academy soon enough.’

  Nobu nodded, grimacing. ‘Yasu not here?’

  ‘Must have slipped out while I was asleep.’ Kenjiro leaned forward, his bony forehead damp with sweat, and gripped Nobu’s wrist. ‘You know what? It was Tanabata yesterday – the seventh day of the seventh month. I had to count up the days on my fingers. This new calendar’s just a ploy to make us forget our festivals, our Chinese learning, everything. The old calendar tied us to our roots; this one pitches us into the future. They tell us we have to discard the past and move forward, but they’re wrong. The old ways are part of what we are. Anyway, I’ve chosen my pen name: Wanderer of the Eastern Seas, like the cowherd crossing the magpie bridge.’

  ‘You’ll have to get well before you start wandering,’ said Nobu. ‘What happened to those clams?’

  The last time Nobu had visited he’d gone down to the river behind one of the newly completed brick and stone government buildings and dug up some clams, said to be an excellent remedy for jaundice. He’d boiled them just as his mother used to, with a handful of ash to make the clams separate from their shells, then simmered them in soy sauce and a dash of sweet mirin cooking wine. He’d also boiled up batches of beans and wrapped them in bamboo leaves for Kenjiro to eat. There was still some left in a pot under a shelf. He dished up a bowlful and gave it to him.

  He was instructing Jubei on how to find and cook the clams when the door creaked open and Yasutaro came in, ducking his head under the lintel.

  ‘Usss. You here too, Younger Brother?’ he said.

  He looked tired and his limp was more pronounced than usual, as if he’d walked a long way. He’d never fully recovered from being shot in the leg in the fighting eight years earlier.

  Nobu studied his face. He remembered how grey and drawn he’d looked that day Jubei and some other young soldiers had brought him to their uncle’s house on a stretcher. He’d never uttered a sound though Nobu could see that his leg was bent at a strange angle and blood was oozing through the bandages. Nobu had been ten at the time. He’d been out playing and had been so excited to see his brother he’d run around the house shouting that he was back. Yasu hadn’t been able to stand. He’d crawled around the tatami using his hands and his good leg.

  Nobu remembered the urgent discussions that had gone on. They’d all been worried Yasutaro would be captured if he stayed in the house and had decided to hide him in a ravine in the mountains. Nobu and Jubei had carried him there and made a bed for him out of boards and camouflaged it with a roof of leafy branches. They’d stayed there with him. Jubei had washed Yasu’s wound every day with water from a mountain spring and changed the dressings and Nobu had sneaked out after nightfall to fetch food from the house and bury the soiled bandages.

  Yasutaro had been ill for a long time. He had been taciturn even before he was wounded and afterwards had turned even more inwards. Nobu had grown expert at noticing the tiniest sign of joy or grief or anger.

  Yasu eased himself down on his knees on the floor, grunting as he manipulated his injured leg. Nobu poured him some water.

  ‘What news of the great world?’ demanded Kenjiro, his eyes glittering.

  Yasu sat for a while, staring at the ground. When he looked up, there was the hint of a twinkle in his eye. ‘They say the government’s going to abolish samurai stipends.’

  ‘Stipends? What stipends?’ said Kenjiro gleefully. ‘When we lost the war that was the end of stipends for us. The potato samurai need their stipends, though – without their stipends they’ll be in trouble. First they lose their swords, now their incomes. They should have stayed on their sweet potato farms, not come up here throwing their weight around, brandishing their hoes and spades. They’ll finally get some idea of how we northerners feel – and about time, too.’

  ‘They’ll get jobs easily enough,’ said Yasutaro grimly. ‘We’ll still be at the bottom of the heap.’

  ‘Well, at least we can enjoy our enemies’ downfall.’

  ‘Things are getting serious,’ said Yasu in measured tones. ‘They’re forming militias down south. They’ve got their own military academies there and they’re training and carrying out manoeuvres. The word is that the governor of Kagoshima has refused to implement the new mandate. As far as he’s concerned, there’ll be no abolishing of stipends in Kagoshima or anywhere in the Satsuma lands. There’s even talk that Satsuma may rise against the government and declare independence.’

  ‘The government is half Satsuma men. If they rise against the government they rise against themselves. It’s as the Chinese sages say. The wise man waits and his enemies tear each other to pieces, like Tosa fighting dogs.’

  Nobu was aware of a dryness in his mouth and a queasy sensation in his stomach. There was a thought gnawing at him. He’d been trying to push it away but he couldn’t keep it at bay any longer. Taka’s father. Everyone knew he’d been one of the leading figures in the government and had stormed out several years ago and gone back to his home base in the south. His name was on
everyone’s lips – Kitaoka the Great. He must be one of the leaders of this rebellion.

  ‘The Satsuma, you say,’ he said. ‘So Kitaoka …’

  ‘It’s politics,’ said Kenjiro. ‘You’re too young to understand.’

  Yasutaro looked at Nobu with big sad eyes.

  ‘No one knows what game General Kitaoka’s playing. He’s biding his time. No one even knows where he is. Everyone’s waiting to see what he does. If he gives the word the south will rise, if he doesn’t they may still rise. Or they may not.’

  ‘And if they rise …’

  ‘They’ll send the army to put down the insurrection and we’ll all join up. We’ll get our own back on the potato samurai.’

  13

  ‘CUT OFF OUR stipends? Next thing you know they’ll be cutting off our balls!’

  Eijiro’s bellow rattled the paper doors, skimming through the empty rooms to the distant wing where Taka sat on her knees with their mother, Fujino, sewing. Even on the other side of the house she could hear that his words were slurred. His behaviour made her cringe. Drinking with his cronies again. In recent days these drinking parties had become longer and noisier and now went on well into the night.

  Taka was stitching together a couple of squares of silk in the flickering light of the oil lamps, attaching the sleeve of one of her wedding kimonos, wiping her hands on a piece of cotton so as not to stain the expensive brocade. She could hardly concentrate for the noise. Transparent moths flitted around the flames. The air was hot and moist. In the darkness outside the circle of light, the doors had been taken out to allow the tiniest breeze to flow through.

  A voice growled in Satsuma brogue. ‘This government. Every time it’s the same. Cut your hair, they say – if you like, that is. Then a couple of years later, we’re to chop off our topknots – by law.’

  ‘Come on, Yamakawa,’ yelled a dissenter. ‘You flaunt your cropped cut as proud as any of us!’