by Nogami Yaeko
The road narrowed, but the back streets were as neatly straight and parallel as the main road. A breeze came skimming along the street that divided the shadowy and sunny parts of town, carrying an ocean scent that was never found in Kyōto. The wind tickled Kisaburō’s head, which he had neatly shaved that morning, and ruffled the collar of his fashionable, light blue jacket. He was entering Daikumachi.
Torigai Yahei’s house was rather small, surrounded by a low earthen wall, and there was a small garden in front of the main entrance gate. The chrysanthemums along the bottom of the hedge had developed buds, like yellow grain.
Kisaburō entered the main gate, walked toward the house, and stood outside the outermost sliding door. “Is anybody there?”
There was no response, nor did he hear the sound of people singing Noh or hitting a board to keep the rhythm. Kisaburō remembered that his uncle took his students to Kishiwada for teaching on the fourth and fifth days of each month. He heard the cheerful voices of women laughing from the back of the house. Somebody must be home.
He saw brightly striped sandals with red straps lined up by the entrance, and knew that Ochika’s old friends were there. Recalling his mother’s warning, he knew he shouldn’t have come. But, feeling rebellious, he slid open the outermost door and walked into the house’s greeting area, announcing his presence loudly. He told himself he was visiting the forbidden house just to annoy his mother, and not because he was intrigued by the women inside.
Finally, there was the sound of light footsteps approaching quickly, and one side of the paper screen in front of him was opened smoothly.
“Oh, Kī-san,” Ochika greeted him, using his nickname. “Why are you acting like a guest? You can just come in without asking.”
“I wanted to let you know that I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“You almost came back just to be sick, didn’t you? Anyhow, you don’t need to be shy around my guests, and they won’t be staying long. Come on.”
She gave him a push on the back. As always, she took note of Kisaburō’s appearance and praised his jacket, which had a design of silver waves on pale purple-blue. The pair walked toward the room where Ochika’s visitors were waiting, no doubt keeping their ears open for any hint as to the identity of the visitor.
Even before they entered the room, Ochika announced cheerfully, “My darling has arrived. Don’t be jealous.”
In the room was an older woman, Oman, who looked thin when sitting next to the voluptuous Ochika, and a young woman, Yuri, who looked like she could be thirteen or fourteen. Beyond the room was an open Noh practice stage. A thick, green pine painted on the backdrop was reflected in the wooden stage, which had been polished until it shone by Yahei’s disciples, who cleaned it every morning as part of the discipline of their practice. To Kisaburō, the stage had a fresh, cool ambience that set it apart from the house’s common rooms.
Oman was leaning against one side of the sliding door with one knee pulled up casually, rather than sitting with both of them tucked beneath her. She didn’t bother to correct her sitting position when she saw Kisaburō come into the room, staring at him intently with her long, black, eyes. “This is not the first time I’ve seen you.”
“Oh, you cat!” Ochika exclaimed. “Where did you have your secret rendezvous?”
Oman ignored Ochika and kept talking in a hoarse voice that didn’t suit her coquettish face. “It must have been last March, on the eighth, when Miguel’s cargo arrived. You went there with your uncle, didn’t you?”
Remembering, Kisaburō explained to Ochika, “It was when my uncle bought his European twilled raincoat.”
“Well, how lucky you got to go with him,” Ochika told him.
“That’s Miguel—he invites everybody,” Oman interjected. “The girls were all anxious to go, so I was asked to chaperone them.”
“No wonder Miguel knows everybody’s secrets with all those girls around,” Ochika said. “Yuri, did you go, too?”
Yuri grinned vacantly, showing her front teeth through thin lips, and nodded timidly. She was wearing a red satin kimono with a flower design in gold leaf, and despite her childish face she had full, round hips. She had colorful cords draped from her waist like fins, and her face had a smooth, white chin and small, round black eyes, making her resemble a rare goldfish from China. Kisaburō didn’t remember her among those flamboyant women who followed the Europeans.
The year before, right after attacking Kyūshū, Hideyoshi had unexpectedly banished all the European Jesuit missionaries from Japan, claiming that they preached an evil creed in the land of the gods. The European merchants, however, were accepted. To ban them would have meant abandoning overseas trade, and with it the weapons that were an absolute necessity for uniting Japan.
Because of Hideyoshi’s policy, Miguel de Souza, a merchant from Portugal, was able to make money as usual in ports from Nagasaki and Hirado in the south and as far north as Sakai. Miguel, an energetic man of forty, was a broker and an interpreter as well as a merchant. He boasted that he had been born in Lisbon, but perhaps he had actually been born in Macao—which the Japanese called Amakawa at that time—and his mother must have been a Macanese woman. He was not so tall, and had yellowish skin. His nose didn’t protrude as grotesquely far as other Europeans’, who in the popular imagination all had red hair and blue eyes, making them appear very mysterious and strange, even dangerous, to most Japanese. Miguel’s features were still unusual to his Japanese associates, but not as frightening as most Europeans’. Moreover, Miguel was fluent in various Japanese dialects and could communicate as easily with merchants in Nagasaki as with those in Sakai. In Sakai he knew all the right people, including magistrate Matsui Yūkan, to whom he never failed to send gifts. He had even sent Hideyoshi a secret gift through Matsui.
In the pleasure quarter, where he stayed whenever he came to Sakai, the women decided that the secret gift was a European miracle drug. They gossiped that Hideyoshi’s beautiful, beloved mistress Cha Cha, who divided her time between Jurakudai and Ōsaka Castle, was pregnant because of the drug. They also whispered that those ogre-like Europeans, who used to scare them so much they didn’t even want to get close, weren’t that different from Japanese men. It must have been some kind of strange foreign magic that made Japanese women fall in love with them and even sail far away with them in European ships.
Miguel would recite the ingredients for the drug in a sing-song voice: sperm of a rutting three-year-old horse, three different kinds of flowers that had been spread on the bed of a thirteen-year-old bride on her wedding night, three shiny pieces of three different stars, thirteen genital hairs from three different three-legged female foxes kept in three separate caves of a witch who had three horns, the saliva of three sultans, three scent glands from a civet cat, and three Indian strawberries picked from the top of a butcher’s shop three houses from the corner. The women never doubted that the drug worked. But he would never tell them the secret of how the ingredients were mixed together or how they became a pill. Nor would Miguel tell them why the skin lotions he sold were so smooth and such beautiful pink or white colors. The women decided that the merchandise brought by the European ships was the best, and that the Europeans could make mysterious things that the Japanese couldn’t even imagine.
Miguel’s main business at Sakai was to negotiate with traders who had goods bound for Europe, which Miguel would transport to the European ships docked in northern Kyūshū. Because his main business was to broker deals between other merchants, he only brought samples of his own wares, which he exhibited at restaurants and in the privacy of the second homes of wealthy merchants, where there was typically more room than in their main residences. The wares were supposed to be shown only to the friends or family of the merchants in question, but others who hadn’t been invited also wanted to come, and so sometimes the group was unexpectedly large.
The magic potions that the women whispered about were not to be found. But there was plenty more: amber, v
elvet, woolen cloth, watches, eyeglasses, glassware, purses of Cordoba leather, handkerchiefs with beautiful embroidery, brimless hats, and the Virgin Mary medals that even non-Christians wore as an accessory. He also brought rosaries from San Tome in India, aloe wood incense, agila wood incense, decorated boxes from Kanton, and food such as sponge cake, bolo biscuits, red wine, honey, and pickled hot peppers. Just being able to see those rare and exotic items was a badge of honor, and the more people talked about what they had seen, the better it was for Miguel’s business. Sometimes he would sell samples of his wares at a discount. Yahei’s much-loved raincoat had been bought when the spring exhibition was held at the house of a merchant who was one of his Noh students, said Kisaburō.
“But Miguel’s generosity is only a show,” Oman said. “He never does anything unless he can make a profit from it.”
“He’s not the only European who acts that way.” Ochika nodded with her round, upturned chin as she high-handedly tore Miguel apart.
“That’s why I’m concerned about this girl,” Oman replied, nodding toward Yuri. “I think Miguel’s more interested in money than her well-being.”
“Miguel is the one who is taking her to Amakawa, but I hear that once they arrive he’s going to sell her to a different man,” said Ochika.
“Yes, the situation is complicated.”
“But Miguel must have some kind of plan.”
“Of course. Miguel doesn’t make mistakes.”
Oman continued to tell Yuri’s story, which had been interrupted by Kisaburō’s arrival. Miguel had told them that a well-known, wealthy man in Amakawa wanted a charming Japanese girl and asked him to find him one without worrying about the cost. Miguel had fastened upon Yuri, who was fifteen years old and had been working in the quarters for less than six months. She was an orphan, quiet, just a chunk of round, white meat. Even the way she sat was forlorn and helpless. There would be no objection from her foster parents over her sale, because they would make a handsome percentage on the transaction.
Everyone involved in the deal, however, would have to be careful not to run afoul of Hideyoshi’s ban on human trafficking in China, Korea, and the South Seas. The laws had been made stricter at the same time the European missionaries were banished. Miguel was very careful of those laws; he had invented a story that Yuri had been solicited by a Japanese man in Nagasaki—where Yuri would have to travel in order to get the boat to Amakawa—so there would be nothing linking the deal to him.
“She is ready for this,” Oman continued. “She thinks that if she stays here, her foster parents would constantly be asking for a greater share of the money she makes from prostitution. And because she is sensitive, this kind of work affects her deeply. Being sold to a man from Europe or Amakawa would be a small price to pay if the man would take care of her for the rest of her life.”
“Well, even if she doesn’t want to go, she no longer has a choice.”
“I pity her.” Oman said. “She gives up too easily; she stirs some kind of feeling in me. From the very beginning I’ve been taking care of her, taking the role of her parents. Even if, as you say, she doesn’t have a choice, I thought at least I could help her understand what she will find there.”
Ochika was fifteen—the same age as Yuri—when she had been sold and taken away from Japan by a European ship. Ochika knew it would be a waste of time for Oman to attempt to describe the experience. “Forget it,” she snapped coldly at Oman, staring at Yuri as if seeing her for the first time. Yuri was cowering like a tiny cat, looking up at her with frightened eyes. Ochika’s memory of herself twenty years ago brought her old resentments to the surface. “Even if I told you what happened, you won’t really understand until you go there.”
“Maybe so, but—”
“And even though we’re talking about the South Seas or India, they’re still part of the same human world. Men are men and women are women. As long as you’re aware that we all spend our nights the same way, you can survive anywhere you go.”
“But if Yuri accepts this offer, there’s no guarantee she will ever return as you did,” Oman argued. She drew her knee down underneath her and her thick eyebrows closed over the bridge of her nose. “Sometimes others are taken by the ships, and they either die or are lost somewhere and never seen again. Women like you, who come back again to where they were born, are just a dream.”
Ochika had been no different from the other women who had pined for Japan. From the European ship captain who had bought her at Hirado, she was passed to a customs officer, to his supervisor, to a soldier, to a merchant … Man after man, they became either buyers or sellers. Starting in Goa, India, each time she changed location the price had gone up. Finally, the head of a prostitution ring in Amakawa had sold her to a wealthy 80-year-old man.
The old man, who owned everything from a shipping company to a bank, had been afflicted by gangrene and had had his legs cut off. Although he was nothing but a heavy trunk wrapped in ocean-blue silk robe, bundled up on the bed like a package in straw matting, his carnal appetites were as strong as ever.
His sons, old men themselves, had been waiting for him to die. They wanted to own Ochika, whose beauty never faded, even as she moved from man to man. She was like the moon that comes back to its full, round shape after it wanes and does not show the passage of time.
Those praiseworthy sons came in and out of their father’s room, where the stench of death already hovered. The father, afraid that his sons would try to poison him, never ate or drank anything unless Ochika had tasted it first. Because of that, the release the sons were waiting for did not come easily. Eventually, they dropped their inhibitions and seduced Ochika, not bothering to conceal this fact from their father.
The father’s gray-green pupils shot phosphorescent daggers at his villainous sons from sunken eye sockets in his swollen, purple face. Finally, his last moments approached. He received extreme unction and had last rites and his last confession. That done, he told the priest his dying wish: that Ochika be sent back to Japan rather than being sold on.
He didn’t mean to reward her for her three years of service. Rather, even on his deathbed, his jealousy was so passionate that he wanted to be sure his sons would never have her. That was how Ochika was able to come back to Sakai again. But she might not have come back at all if it had not been for her mother, whom she had to take care of. She might just as easily have gotten on a boat going west, not eastward to Japan.
Vincenzio, an employee of a local shipping company, had fallen in love with Ochika, and had a plan to outwit the three brothers, who were plotting to ignore their father’s will and keep Ochika for themselves. Vincenzio promised her that if she wanted to go to Portugal, a friend of his who was a ship captain would help them escape together.
“If it hadn’t been for my mother, I would have accepted the invitation instead of returning to Japan,” Ochika told them. “But, to tell the truth, I was quite fond of him.”
“Oh, you’re making me jealous,” said Oman.
“Well, Vincenzio was very handsome, maybe the same age as Miguel, but slender—and single. And after you’ve danced with him, everyone else feels like a log. He caused a sensation, even among the respectable wives and the young women at the company.”
“Does ‘dancing’ mean that thing Miguel always wants to do—holding hands together and going around and around?”
“Yes, that’s dancing,” Ochika said. “But now I don’t even think about Vincenzio. If I’d decided to escape with him, I could have gone to the real Europe. That’s what I regret. I think about Europe now, how splendid and gorgeous it is, and how even Amakawa, which is amazing to us Japanese, is just a provincial country in comparison. Anyway, once you leave Japan, you realize that the Imperial Regent is not the only ruler in the world. It’s better for Yuri to think of it that way. There are many interesting lives to live and exotic things to see beyond Kyōto and Sakai.” Ochika was almost speaking to herself rather than to Oman and Yuri.
But suddenly she flashed a smile at Kisaburō, who was sitting next to her, looking at him as if trying to discover his hidden secrets. “What about you, Kī-san? You must think about visiting other places in the world, too.”
Kisaburō’s slender face—cheeks still as slim as they had been when he was a long-haired boy—flushed with bewilderment. How did Ochika know his secret desire? It wasn’t even as concrete as an ambition. Like a dream that flows into other dreams, it was only a wisp of cloud that drifted through his mind; it was a thought like the shadow of a bird flying. But he kept silent.
A maid came in to tell them that a man from the pleasure quarters had come to pick up Oman and Yuri. The pair quickly prepared to go, retrieving their black cypress hats from the entrance room. Draped from the hats were silk veils that covered them completely, and scarlet cords that descended in special looping knots. In the past, these veiled hats had been used for long trips, but nowadays they were convenient when one wanted to avoid being seen in public. The women looked like two beautiful, cylindrical white towers as they walked away.
5
Ochika saw the women off. Rather than coming back into the room where they had been sitting, she stood outside the doorway. “It doesn’t matter if there is an order banning human trafficking. Not every girl is born to a wealthy merchant family,” she told Kisaburō. “Going overseas may be the result of some karmic debt Yuri is carrying from a past lifetime. I think she feels that, too.”
Her memories of having been taken as a child by that European ship churned in her voice. She pushed them aside and turned to face the kitchen. “We were given a duck as a gift, and I bought fresh shrimp,” she added quickly. “I’ll treat you to a Chinese dinner tonight. Why don’t you go play with our deck of cards? You’ll find them in the usual place. Your uncle should be coming back soon.”