The Samurai's Daughter

by Lesley Downer

  ‘As for the Third Generation,’ her mother would trill, speaking of Kikugoro, the third in his acting dynasty, ‘he’s incorrigible. You’d think he’d be satisfied with two but he goes and takes another lover – and so young. Really, that boy could be his grandson.’ Or, flapping her fan disparagingly, ‘That Older Brother’, referring to the great Uzaemon, ‘he’s lost his touch. I saw him perform the other night. He should retire and leave the stage open for someone younger.’

  Usually Taka didn’t pay much attention to their middle-aged women’s chat. But today the conversation seemed to take a different turn.

  ‘You’re so cruel, Kiharu,’ Fujino was saying to her friend in her most wheedling tones, as if cajoling a customer. She took a sip of warm sake and held it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing it. ‘Don’t keep me in the dark. That lover of yours, I know he tells you things when you’re tucked up in your futons. What was he now? Minister of defence, wasn’t it, or the interior? Minister of something, anyway. Come on, be kind. Even my servants know there’s something going on. Another uprising, is it?’

  Her chair creaked as she adjusted her bustle, shooting a sidelong glance at Taka. Taka played with the stringy grey strands of beef, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice she hadn’t eaten any.

  Aunt Kiharu waved the waitresses away, glancing over her shoulder as if afraid someone might overhear. ‘It was in Hagi, in Choshu country, in the south-west. Do you remember Issei Maebara?’

  ‘The Choshu fellow with the horse face and wild hair? Of course. He was imperial counsellor and vice minister of the army. He resigned years ago and we never heard a word from him after that.’

  Aunt Kiharu hesitated. ‘There’s a rumour there was an uprising – only a rumour, mind – and that he was behind it.’

  ‘That makes three uprisings in – what – fifteen days.’ Fujino was leaning forward, chopsticks in the air, chewing her under lip, her eyes glittering. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘It seems he and his men raided the arsenal and plundered the district treasury and stocked up on weapons and money. Then the government got wind of it and sent in troops. Another of those crazy protests against the government cutting off samurais’ stipends – that’s how my danna sees it, anyway.’ She flashed her black eyes at Taka’s mother. Whatever Aunt Kiharu’s danna – her patron and lover – said was not to be questioned.

  ‘It’s all very well for him,’ Fujino snapped, bunching her caterpillar eyebrows. ‘He has a job. What are these men supposed to do without their stipends? They can’t wear swords any more, they’ve had to cut their hair, there are no wars to fight. They have to make a living somehow.’

  ‘My danna says there’s been rioting in the countryside too. The farmers are up in arms.’

  Taka stared wildly at one then the other. An uprising, and they’d sent troops to put it down? Perhaps Nobu had been called upon to fight. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t heard from him. But no, she told herself. They wouldn’t use students to put down a rebellion.

  Aunt Kiharu was fiddling with her fan.

  ‘And what about Maebara-sama?’ Fujino demanded, her voice hoarse. She was panting, her large bosom rising and falling. ‘What happened to him?’

  There was a long silence. ‘He went on the run.’ Aunt Kiharu hesitated and dropped her eyes and drew her breath through her teeth.

  For a moment Fujino’s air of regal self-possession crumbled, as if a curtain had been lifted, and Taka caught a glimpse of someone very different, someone she didn’t recognize at all. The colour drained from her mother’s cheeks, her shoulders slumped and her round face hollowed and grew haggard. She stared blank-eyed into the distance.

  Taka turned away. She couldn’t bear to see her proud, strong mother suddenly defenceless and afraid. She had a dreadful feeling that whatever was happening was going to change their lives, though she couldn’t yet imagine how.

  There was a long silence. Fujino dabbed at her eyes, her hand shaking. ‘So he’s been executed.’

  ‘Not yet, but he will be. After a proper trial, of course.’

  ‘Poor Maebara.’

  ‘You knew him?’ Taka was desperate to know why her mother was so shaken by the news. ‘Was it in Gion? Did I meet him?’

  But the façade was firmly back in place. Her mother smiled ruefully. ‘It was before your time, my dear. A bit serious for my taste, but he liked his drink as well as the next man. And to hear him sing! To see him dance! He could do Sukeroku’s grand entrance as well as the greatest kabuki actor. And utterly committed to the southern cause.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Yet he ends up with his head cut off – and by his own comrades.’

  They sat in silence while meat hissed and sizzled on the iron plate. Shouts and laughter and the banging of plates echoed from the main restaurant. Fujino and Aunt Kiharu seemed caught up in their thoughts. At least there’d been no mention of Masuda-sama. Taka was not sure how long she could carry on the pretence that she missed him and was eager to be married.

  Aunt Kiharu put down her chopsticks. ‘What a bunch of hotheads they were!’ Her eyes were shining. ‘But how we loved them! I don’t remember Gion ever being so exciting, before or since.’

  Taka’s mother chewed silently, the lightest of frowns creasing the smooth pale flesh of her forehead. She shook her head. ‘Poor Maebara-sama!’ she said again.

  ‘When did they first turn up in Kyoto, those southern lads with their ponytails and their sleeves tied back, itching for a fight?’ Aunt Kiharu persisted. ‘I can’t have been thirteen, I hadn’t even come out yet. I still had my hair in the ware shinobu style and painted my face and wobbled around on those absurdly high clogs and had long flapping sleeves like the little virgin that I was. Let me think. I didn’t meet them in a teahouse.’

  ‘I should think not. They didn’t have any money, unlike the usual customers,’ said Taka’s mother. She took a folded tea-ceremony paper from her bag and blotted her lips, leaving a scarlet imprint.

  ‘And unlike the usual customers they were young and handsome. Do you remember those awful merchants we used to entertain with their wrinkly jowls and bellies hanging over their sashes? Sometimes, when I was snuggling up to one, telling him how handsome he was and how much I loved him, I had to bite my cheeks to stop myself laughing. You’re lucky you don’t have to play those silly games, Taka. They were forever throwing money around, showing off the flashy silk linings to their coats, doing business deals over dinner and getting disgustingly drunk. It was all fun, though – until those young men appeared. They were a breath of fresh air.’

  Taka opened her mouth to protest. Her mother too had been swept off her feet by these romantic young warriors when she was Taka’s age. How could she possibly imagine that Taka could want to marry a banker? But if she refused to marry Masuda-sama, she and her mother would be on their way to Kyushu in no time, she reminded herself. She really had got herself into a fix.

  ‘They must have stayed in cheap inns to begin with or slept under a bridge, until they found us geishas. We really did fall in love with them, it wasn’t play-acting when it came to them.’

  ‘So much we didn’t even care that they had no money.’ Fujino’s skirts ballooned as she rocked back on her chair. She patted them down with a plump hand, fluttering her lashes as if she were once again surrounded by handsome young warriors.

  ‘And then the fighting began. If truth be told it was those young men wreaking havoc.’ Aunt Kiharu glanced at Taka. ‘You were just a little girl then, Taka. You don’t remember.’

  ‘I do,’ Taka protested, but her mother and her friend were too caught up in their memories to pay the slightest attention.

  ‘I used to run in and out with flasks of sake when they were having their secret meetings. They’d be on their feet, arguing, or heads together, plotting. “Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”, that was their slogan. You know what they wanted, Taka? It was to drive out the foreigners. It’s hard to imagine that now, isn’t it? And to throw out the shogun
, who ruled the country in those days, and kill the northern clansmen.’

  The two women looked at each other and smiled and shook their heads.

  ‘They were ronin,’ said Taka’s mother. ‘Young people today don’t even know what that means. They’d left their clans so their lords wouldn’t have to take responsibility for them. That meant they were free, they could do anything they liked. Of course they all had principles, but the trouble was, one clan’s principles were the opposite of another’s.’

  ‘And then the whole place went mad – battles in the streets, swordsmen breaking into the mansions of the shogun’s advisers and cutting off their heads. I remember walking across Fourth Bridge, trying not to look at the heads stuck on bamboo stakes all along the riverside.’

  Fujino flung Taka a worried look. ‘That’s enough, Kiharu,’ she said sharply.

  ‘I was there too, Mother,’ Taka protested. ‘I saw the heads. There was always fighting when I was little.’

  ‘The next thing you know, the shogun’s police come knocking on our door and I’m standing right there, blocking their way, while they shake their swords at me.’ Aunt Kiharu grabbed the sake flask and filled Fujino’s cup, then held out her own for Fujino to fill. ‘Cool as you like, swearing blind there was no one there, when all the while my lover’s under the house, not daring to breathe.’

  ‘And which lover was that, my dear?’

  ‘There were more than enough in those days! Do you remember Hiro? He always had a twinkle in his eye, that one. What was that song he used to sing?’ Aunt Kiharu cocked her head and sang in her geisha warble:

  ‘Drunk, my head pillowed in a beauty’s lap;

  Awake and sober, grasping power to govern the nation.

  ‘Dear Hiro always said they had to hold him back to stop him cutting down everyone in sight with his sword. Yes, they were certainly firebrands, those young men. Until Masa came along and calmed everyone down.’

  Taka had been toying with her meat. She sat up with a start. It was her father Aunt Kiharu was talking about. All this had something to do with him. That was why her mother was so agitated.

  Fujino had lowered her eyes and was staring at the table, her plump cheeks flushed, trying to compose her face, tearing her tea-ceremony paper into shreds.

  ‘Now that was a man!’ said Aunt Kiharu blithely. Nothing could stop her when she was in full flow. ‘Those broad shoulders of his and that bull neck. He towered over everyone. And those eyes. You felt as if he could see straight through you. The other lads would be talking and shouting, whipping out their swords at the first opportunity, but he … You’d say something and he’d think for a long time, then answer very slowly and carefully in that Satsuma accent of his. I couldn’t understand a word until I got used to it. And once he’d decided something, nothing would budge him. All that pent-up energy waiting to burst out. He was like a volcano.’

  Taka’s mother laughed, not a high-pitched geisha tinkle but a throaty chuckle. ‘He was hefty, that one, as big as a horse. In fact, you couldn’t find a horse strong enough to carry him. Good thing you don’t take after him, Taka. Good thing you don’t take after either of us.’ She sighed. ‘Not surprising he and I got together, I suppose. He could certainly put away his rice – you’ve never seen such an appetite.’

  ‘An appetite for other things too, I imagine,’ said Aunt Kiharu, glancing slyly at Fujino out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘An appetite for life. I remember when he first turned up at the teahouse. I’d always been rather a specialized taste in Kyoto. Men didn’t usually go in for large women.’ She dimpled. ‘They didn’t call me Princess Pig for nothing. I was no smaller then than I am now.’

  ‘No need for modesty, my dear,’ said Aunt Kiharu. ‘You ended up with the best man of all.’

  ‘Well, I could sing and dance as well as anyone, I made sure of that.’

  ‘You were witty, too, you had them all in fits of laughter. And you knew how to make a man feel good.’

  ‘Then one day this hulking fellow turns up. One of the Satsuma leaders brought him, if I remember rightly. I was a geisha, of course – can’t sink lower than that – and he was a low-ranking samurai; we both came from unassuming backgrounds. And neither of us was small. He looked at me and I looked at him and that was it.’

  ‘And a few years later, when a troop of Choshu lads tried to kidnap the emperor and got right to the imperial palace gates—’

  ‘There was our Masa, at the head of the Satsuma troops, defending it.’

  ‘Half the city went up in flames. You were a little girl by then, Taka, such a pretty little girl.’

  ‘I ran out into the road and saw flames filling the sky, like a wall of fire,’ said Taka, joining in. ‘And heard the crackling and the roar.’

  ‘And in the end they won. Who would ever have imagined that? The Choshu and the Satsuma joined forces and won and the next thing you know, our lovers have taken over the realm. They put on western clothes and cut their hair and grew up and became statesmen.’

  ‘Some of them even married the geishas who’d taken such good care of them. Ikumatsu, for one. She’s the lucky one.’

  ‘She deserved it. Do you remember how she used to charm all the northerners who went to her teahouse to drink? She’d winkle secrets out of them, then pass them on to Kogoro. And when he ran away from the shogun’s police and hid under Fourth Bridge disguised as a beggar, she saved rice balls and took them out to him every night.’

  ‘And now Kogoro Katsura is one of the most powerful men in the land …’

  ‘… and she’s the honourable Madame Katsura. I meet her at parties sometimes. She still plays the shamisen and dances very nicely.’

  The two women looked at each other and smiled ruefully.

  ‘Some did better, some did worse. My danna’s kind enough to me but there was never any talk of marriage,’ said Aunt Kiharu.

  ‘Don’t be silly. He already had a wife. As for my Masa, perhaps he had another wife he never told me about or perhaps he just didn’t want to marry me. Perhaps he wanted to keep me as his geisha, not his wife. Geishas are geishas, wives are wives. Some men want both. Most do, in fact. I must say, I miss that man. He’d scold me if he knew what kind of a life we lead here. He doesn’t believe in spending money or living in luxury.’

  ‘They joined forces and won the war and did exactly what dear Hiro used to sing about – they grasped power to govern the nation. And now – would you believe it? – they’re falling out with each other. Maebara-sama was the vice minister of the army, no less. And now …’

  ‘Well, well.’ Fujino helped herself to another piece of beef.

  Aunt Kiharu narrowed her eyes and gave her a long hard look. With her pointed chin it made her look even more like a little bird. ‘So far these uprisings have been barely tremors.’ She raised her chopsticks, little finger extended, and dunked a piece of beef into her bowlful of raw egg. ‘Take Masa, now,’ she said, measuring her words. ‘If he were to rise with that Satsuma army of his, that would really be something. That would turn this country on its head. That would be a real earthquake.’

  A shiver ran down Taka’s spine. Ever since Eijiro left, her mother hadn’t said a word about her father or what was going on in Kyushu. Despite what Nobu had told her, despite Eijiro’s dramatic departure, she’d been praying they’d all been wrong, that nothing would happen.

  Fujino slapped down her chopsticks and stood up so sharply her chair fell over. ‘Be careful what you say. He’s not a fool.’

  ‘Of course not, my dear. But those men of his – keeping them reined in must be like trying to hold together a rotten water barrel with a frayed old piece of rope. That’s what my danna says.’ Aunt Kiharu unfurled her fan and gave it a flap. ‘But what do I know? I’m just a silly woman.’

  ‘He leads a quiet life down there,’ Fujino retorted a little too sharply. ‘He hunts, he fishes, he farms, he goes for walks with his dogs. That’s all, nothing else. There is no army.’


  A waitress picked up her chair and she settled herself down again, her face once more placid and aloof. Taka stared at her. She wondered if her mother really had any idea what her father was doing. Perhaps he wrote to her; after all, they had always been devoted to each other. Perhaps she knew exactly what was happening; but she was certainly not going to reveal a word of it to anyone.

  ‘Well, well.’ Aunt Kiharu pursed her lips. ‘He’s certainly got the government rattled. If I were you I’d be gone. I’m taking a risk just being seen with you.’

  ‘I’m just his geisha, not his wife. They don’t bother with little fish like us,’ said Taka’s mother. In that case, Taka thought, why had she told the servants to paint over the family crest on the rickshaws and carriages?

  ‘To be honest with you, Kiharu, I’m hanging on here by a thread. If it wasn’t for Taka I’d be down there with Masa. He’s as stubborn as an ox. Once he starts something he’ll see it through to the end. But I want to wait till Taka’s taken care of. She’ll be free of the Kitaoka name soon, she won’t have to carry that stigma any more. She’ll be home and dry, she’ll be a Masuda. The government needs money and the Shimadas hold the purse strings. You know the new Shimada Bank? Our Masuda-sama is virtually running it.’ She smiled. ‘I’m trying to educate her on what he does so when they’re married she can take an interest. I want to make sure she satisfies him in every possible way so he won’t be going to visit geishas or taking concubines.’

  ‘Well, I hope you’ve given her pillow books and instructions on the night-time side of things,’ said Aunt Kiharu in her bird-like trill. Taka cringed, wishing she could disappear under the table. ‘You’d better make sure she knows all the tricks – how to give a man pleasure, how to sing out in the night. You know about that better than anyone. She needs to be the perfect wife and the perfect geisha, both. That’s the best way to make sure a man never strays. Though to be honest, a man that didn’t stray would be a real skinflint!’ She turned to Taka. ‘Tuck in, child. This beef is delicious, it simply dissolves in the mouth. It’s really no different at all from eel, you know. Think of it as mountain eel, it’ll go down easier.’