the Rose & the Crane

by Clint Dohmen

  But Simon’s vengeance was not the only consideration at hand. In addition to Taro Arai, who spent time convalescing from his Ouchi-bestowed wounds, most of the crew had suffered from joint weakness and physical malaise that would have made it impossible to sail on. Three months on the diet of the Nihon-jin, however, had strengthened the crew.

  Now Simon was anxious to leave, but there was a mystery he needed to solve and he thought Taro was his best chance at solving it.

  Once recovered from his injuries, Taro had proven to be a very pleasant companion. Eager to learn and more talkative than Kojiro, Taro had gradually introduced Simon to the surroundings of Kannoura. He found the young man sitting in the portico of an unwalled, wooden temple, nestled in the foothills overlooking the village. A few bald men nearby dragged long sticks across the ground, smoothing the gravel.

  “You rake rocks?” Simon asked, settling in beside Taro.

  “I don’t rake rocks, the priests do,” Taro answered. “I don’t have the skill.”

  “It takes skill to rake rocks?”

  “It takes skill to rake rocks properly.”

  “I bet the Irish would be good at it,” Simon mused. “They rake rocks in Ireland; only they do it to get the rocks out of the soil.”

  “Ireland?” Taro asked curiously. While recovering from his injuries, he had studied the native languages of both Simon and Aldo. He wasn’t picking them up as quickly as Kojiro was, but he was able to converse reasonably well.

  “Dreadful little island, full of pirates, bogs, and rocks.”

  “What do they do with the rocks that they rake?”

  “They build walls with them; lots of walls in Ireland. Now why on earth do you intentionally put all these small rocks into the soil, then rake them?” Simon stared curiously at the garden of rocks.

  Taro pointed. “Do you see the four large, natural rocks in the sea of smaller white stones?”

  “Of course.”

  “Those represent the four main islands of Japan: Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, and the smallest is Shikoku. We are on Shikoku. What do you think the white stones represent?”

  “The ocean,” Simon answered confidently.

  “Yes, you are correct, but also wrong. This is a Zen garden, and the rocks can represent many different things. Look at the pattern the priests have raked. Does anything else occur to you?”

  Simon studied the rocks for another minute. “No.”

  “How about the mound of rocks in the corner?”

  Simon hadn’t noticed the three-foot-high mound of crushed white gravel. “Is it another island?”

  “Yes and no. At night the moon will reflect off of it, and the ridges you see in the sea of gravel will look different.”

  Simon looked at the rectangular pattern of raked stone ridges and had some doubt as to how they could appear any different in moonlight or daylight, but he kept his opinion to himself. The breathtaking view of the village, harbor, and surrounding countryside was far more captivating to Simon, but a modicum of their hosts’ politeness had rubbed off on him, so he feigned interest in the carefully raked rocks.

  “Do you wish to practice Zazen?” Taro interrupted Simon’s thoughts.

  “What is Zazen?”

  “It is a way to settle your mind and harness your energy. I would not ask Aldo. Though he seems open to our culture in many ways, he is very stubborn about his religion.”

  “Aye, that he is. I’m not going to have to sacrifice any living creatures, am I? Because even I draw the line there. I’m not a heathen Scot.”

  “I assure you, there is no sacrifice,” Taro smiled.

  The two of them walked into the temple where a priest was lighting incense. Taro sat on the tatami with his back straight and formed his hands into a circle over his lap. By this time the priest had finished and was walking about the room chanting in a soothing monotone. Somewhat alarmingly to Simon, the priest was also carrying a rod of thin, flexible bamboo. Simon had attained an improved level of flexibility over the past few months due to the unfortunate lack of chairs at meal times, so he did his best to imitate Taro’s pose.

  “What do I do now?”

  “Think of nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “And breathe.”

  “Of course I’ll breathe, but how do I think of nothing?”

  “Empty your mind of all thought.”

  “I believe Aldo would tell you that’s the everyday state of my mind.”

  “Then the Way is close at hand, and you do not have to seek it from afar.”

  Simon cast a quick glance at Taro. Is he having a go at me? “It’s not really the everyday state of my mind. Were Aldo to have said that, it would have been a joke.”

  “That’s a shame?”

  “Why is it a shame?”

  “Because everyday mind is the Way, and if your mind is empty of all thought, you will more easily find enlightenment.”

  “Well, that’s clear as mud.”

  “Clear as mud? But mud is not clear.”

  “Exactly.” Simon thought he might be getting the hang of this Zen thing as he watched Taro ponder his own little Zen-ism for a moment. Even though it sounded quite impossible, out of respect for his host, Simon tried thinking of nothing again, but he found the more he tried not to have “thoughts,” the more “thoughts” occurred to him. He looked over at Taro.

  “Look down and look in front of you,” Taro instructed him.

  Simon tried to concentrate on a break in the tatami rectangles as thoughts continued to flood his mind. After what felt like hours, but was in fact about ten minutes, he began to feel sleepy and started to drift off.

  Thwack! The sting from the priest’s bamboo rod sent a tingle down Simon’s spine. It was more than enough to wake him up, but probably not enough to leave a mark. His slumping shoulders shot back immediately, and his spine straightened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Taro interrupt his meditation to raise his palm towards the priest. The priest bowed to Taro, glared at Simon, then took up his rounds of chanting again. Over the next hour, which felt like days, Simon drifted off a couple more times, but he did not feel the sting of the priest’s rod again. After an hour, the priest chimed a bell and Taro stood.

  Simon tried to stand, but could not. His eyes searched the four-hundred-year-old temple while the blood began to circulate in his legs again. A calligraphy engraving on the wall caught his eye, which Taro noticed.

  “It says ‘Give and Take.’”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means life is give and take.”

  “Give and take what?”

  “What is not give and take?”

  “Well, say, what if I only take?”

  “Then someone only gives, and still, it is give and take.”

  “But that’s not good.”

  “Good and bad are irrelevant, though one should strive for balance in give and take.”

  Simon could see this discussion quickly spiraling out of control, so he noted the expression for future use on Aldo and changed the subject to his mystery. No matter how many times he had prodded Kojiro over three months, he had failed to get an answer, but Taro was more talkative than most and Simon had built a relationship with him. “Who is Kojiro, and why did we find you on that ship?”

  Taro knew that Kojiro had refused to answer this very question. Taro did not know Kojiro’s reasons for his silence, but he suspected the two most likely causes were embarrassment and humility. Kojiro would certainly be too modest to describe his heroic exploits and was conversely embarrassed by his status as a ronin. In saving their lives, however, Taro judged that the foreigners had earned the right to hear their story.

  “Kojiro is a samurai from a minor family. He shares his family name with a powerful clan, but he is not of that clan.”

  “What is a samurai?” Not wanting to appear stupid, Simon had not asked this question in front of others, but alone with Taro, he felt comfortable asking it.

  “Above al
l, a samurai is a servant. The writing of the word itself means ‘one who serves.’ I believe the captain of your ship has mastered the writing of it.”

  Simon needed no reminders that Aldo was not only approaching fluency in speaking the foreign language, but he was also learning to read and write it as well; an accomplishment that Simon knew his destiny did not include. It required studying and patience, two of his weakest skill sets. “Go on.”

  “You have met the forty-four samurai who serve my father. They hold lands outside the village that you have seen, including the mountain we are on now.”

  “A hard-looking bunch.”

  “Hard-looking?”

  “Tough.”

  “I see. Yes, they are tough. A samurai trains from the time they are born until the time they die. They learn the way of the spear, of the sword, and of the bow, which they start learning from horseback.”

  “That explains one thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “How the Ouchi were able to wound two of my men, through ample defenses, from a moving platform at a great distance.”

  “Yes, to a samurai trained to shoot from horseback, the movement of the ocean would present little difficulty. I heard about your encounter. I must once again express my gratitude to you and your crew for saving my life.”

  Simon was not used to flattery, and he didn’t know how to handle it. “No worries,” he mumbled. “How about Kojiro?” he said to quickly change the subject.

  “Yes, Kojiro. The family he served was assigned to protect the Sanpo-in Temple in Kyoto. Although the temple was indefensible and faced an Ouchi army one hundred times their size, the Hosokawa family had to send a token force. This token force would demonstrate their commitment to the warrior monks who were their allies. Kojiro’s daimyo – I believe you say liege lord – came from a poor, unimportant region of Western Honshu, so he and his samurai were sent to be sacrificed.

  “Bloody bastards those Hosokawas then, eh?”

  “It was a logical move. The monks of that order control powerful temples in the mountains of Kyoto, and it was a small sacrifice to maintain the alliance. Also, you should know, my family owes nominal allegiance to the Hosokawa as well. They are the ruling family of southeastern Shikoku, though we rarely see more of them than their tax collector.”

  Simon thought it seemed awfully cold-hearted, but since Kojiro was still alive, he anticipated a good story was about to unfold and he kept his mouth shut.

  “As it happens, all the samurai from that poor, unimportant village were cut down that day but one. One samurai stood at the gate of the temple and held it against all comers. He killed famed samurai by the dozens, and nameless samurai by the hundreds. It is said that this samurai wielded two katanas more skillfully than anyone had ever seen a person wield one. That samurai was Kojiro.

  “Finally, as the sun set, and the cuts of a hundred swords began to wear him down, he was tackled to the ground by a giant from the Ouchi army. I can’t imagine he was as big as your Neno, for I have never heard of a man that size, but the tales say it was a giant, at least by our Japanese standards. Kojiro broke the giant’s neck, but the honorless Ouchi refused to let him get up and fight from his feet; at this point, they were probably too scared. As this unknown samurai from an unimportant village was pounded into submission on the ground, the master of the temple, in appreciation of Kojiro’s heroic defense, dispatched his own personal squad of bodyguards to save Kojiro. These elite warrior monks, wielding their eight-foot-long naginata, fought their way through to Kojiro and carried him off to the mountains, leaving the master of the temple to the mercy of the Ouchi.”

  “What is a naginata?”

  “A naginata is a long-shafted weapon that ends in a two-foot, curved blade that is sharpened on one side. In the hands of an expert, it will cut men down like a crop harvest. There are no better experts than the warrior monks.”

  “You keep putting the words ‘warrior’ and ‘monk’ together. Am I misunderstanding one or the other? Isn’t a monk a religious person?”

  “You are not misunderstanding. Not all monks are warriors. In fact, most aren’t, but we have had many wars over religion, and the monks have had to adapt to protect themselves. As a result of their dedication, the warrior monks have become fearsome warriors, rivaling even the best samurai. I was in Kyoto studying both religion and the fighting styles of the monks when Kojiro was brought by the temple master’s bodyguard to my temple at Tenryu-ji. Do your religions not have wars?”

  “And how.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are there not warrior monks?”

  Simon thought deeply on the topic for a moment, and although thinking deeply was not a regular pastime for him, he stumbled upon a correlation. “We have Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller, and the Teutonic Knights, I suppose you could call them ‘warrior monks.’ Those are at the top of the list, but there are probably dozens more than that. The ‘Order of the Dragon’ comes to mind as well, I’ve always wanted to find out what that was all about. If you ask me though, all the European ‘warrior monks’ I’ve met seem a bit ‘touched.’”

  “Touched?”

  “Yea, barmy, potty, daft, cracked, one oar in the water types.”

  “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand.”

  “Probably best. Please, continue with your story.”

  “Well, in their frustration at having sustained so many unanticipated losses in what should have been an easy victory, the Ouchi hanged the temple master, beheaded every monk they captured, and burned the temple to the ground. The story became a fairy tale throughout the Kansai region: the ‘Legend of the Crane Warrior.’” I was there when the monks brought him into the temple, though, and I heard the story from the monks directly. They are not men given to exaggeration, quite the opposite, in fact, so I know it is no fairy tale.”

  “Kansai region?”

  “We refer to the area near our capital of Kyoto as the ‘Kansai’ or ‘Kinki’ region. It is the western region of our main island, and in addition to Kyoto, it includes the major cities of Nara, Osaka, and Kobe.”

  “I’m sure Aldo would be thrilled to learn that. Did you say kinky region?”

  “Yes, Kinki.”

  Simon giggled childishly. “Kinky region it is. Please go on.”

  Taro didn’t understand the reason for Simon’s laughter, which was uncharacteristically unmanly, but he continued. “Kojiro’s lord was killed at the temple, and there is no greater dishonor to one who serves than to have no one to serve. A masterless samurai is called a ‘ronin,’ and it is very shameful. He would have killed himself, but in honor of the temple master who sacrificed himself, he owed the monks his service. The monks insisted that he not go to war for them, but instead study the ways of peace, and for ten years, he did just that. He helped train me in the ways of the samurai while I received my spiritual training from the monks. He even came home to my village once, and that is how he knew to bring me, um, us, here.”

  “So how the hell did they ever catch him?” Simon asked. “And you?” he threw in as an afterthought.

  “The Ouchi stormed Tenryu-ji. They brought over seventy thousand men, and as ‘hard-looking’ as the monks were, the thousand monks stood no chance. As the Ouchi bodies piled up around Kojiro and the monks, though, rumors of the resurrection of the Sanpo-in crane samurai began to take root in the Ouchi army. His two-sword fighting style is quite unique, and there were veterans from Sanpo-in who swore it was him. Of course, those rumors were true, except for the resurrection part. Seeing the fear in his army spread, the Ouchi general ordered a withdrawal to the perimeter where he torched the exterior buildings. The fire quickly spread. I was with Kojiro at this time, but I had been wounded and I could stand no longer. The last thing I remember was a wall crashing towards us and Kojiro covering me with his body. After that, I woke up here, although at night I have dreams of monk heads rolling across my body.”

  By G
od, these buggers are humble. Simon thought to himself that if the bodies in the temple had piled up around Kojiro, and Taro was standing next to Kojiro, then Taro must have had a big part in the killing himself, but he made no mention of it. I’m going to have to teach them a thing or two about showmanship before I leave. “Well, that’s a bloody good story,” he said aloud. “If even half of it’s true, you chaps should be the stuff of books and song.”

  “I assure you, Kojiro is the stuff of Ouchi nightmares, but I see no need for people to sing about it.”

  Simon was apoplectic. “Then how on earth do you expect to get famous and be laid by many women?”

  Taro blushed. “Fame is anathema to a devout and humble lifestyle, and why would one desire to have intercourse with many women? Is one not enough?”

  “First of all, where did you learn the word anathema? I don’t even know what it means.”

  “Aldo.”

  “Of course. And speak of the devil.”

  “I have cautioned you many times not to speak of the devil,” Aldo huffed as his rotund, sweating form emerged from atop the last stair.

  “Aldo, my good captain, we were just talking about you.”

  Aldo leaned over at the waist, and for a minute it appeared as though he might vomit. As opposed to the rest of the crew, whom the Japanese diet of fish, vegetables, and rice had made lean and fit, Aldo had somehow eaten his way back to his portly, pre-voyage self. “By all means, continue then,” he managed to wheeze out.

  “Taro was just telling me the story of ‘Kojiro and Taro,’ and as a result, I discovered that he has a rather naïve view on consorting with the fairer sex. In short, he believes that one is enough.”

  Taro turned red. “First, it is the story of Kojiro, not the story of Kojiro and Taro, and second, when you find true love, is one woman not enough?” Taro looked to Aldo for help, but Aldo was still recovering his breath. Meanwhile, Simon was full of breath.

  “My good man, it is the story of Taro and Kojiro. In spite of the fact that you nearly omitted yourself entirely from the narrative, I can read between the lines.”

  “Read between the lines?”

  “I understand what happened in spite of the missing details in your story.”