Ascendancies

by Bruce Sterling

  The bottle had the flawless symmetrical ugliness of foreign manufacture. It was full of amber liquid, and corked. A paper label showed the grotesquely bearded face of an American man, framed by blocky foreign letters.

  “Who’s that?” Onogawa asked, intrigued. “Their king?”

  “No, it’s the face of the merchant who brewed it,” Yoshitoshi said with assurance. “In America, merchants are famous. And a man of the merchant class can even become a soldier. Or a farmer, or priest, or anything he likes.”

  “Hmmph,” said Onogawa, who had gone through a similar transition himself and was not at all happy about it. “Let me see.” He examined the printed label closely. “Look how this foreigner’s eyes bug out. He looks like a raving lunatic!”

  Yoshitoshi stiffened at the term. An awkward moment of frozen silence seeped over the room. Onogawa’s gaffe floated in midair among them, until its nature became clear to everyone. Yoshitoshi had recovered his health recently, but his illness had not been a physical one. No one had to say anything, but the truth slowly oozed its way into everyone’s bones and liver. At length, Onogawa cleared his throat. “I mean, of course, that there’s no accounting for the strange looks of foreigners.”

  Yoshitoshi licked his fleshy lips and the sudden gleam of desperation slowly faded from his eyes. He spoke quietly.

  “Well, my friends in the Liberal Party have told me all about it. Several of them have been to America and back, and they speak the language, and can even read it. If you want to know more, you can read their national newspaper, the Lamp of Liberty, for which I am doing illustrations.”

  Onogawa glanced quickly at Encho. Onogawa, who was not a reading man, had only vague notions as to what a “liberal party” or a “national newspaper” might be. He wondered if Encho knew better. Apparently the comedian did, for Encho looked suddenly grave.

  Yoshitoshi rattled on. “One of my political friends gave me this bottle, which he bought in Yokohama, from Americans. The Americans have many such bottles there—a whole warehouse. Because the American Shogun, Generalissimo Guranto, will be arriving next year to pay homage to our Emperor. And the Guranto, the ‘Puresidento’, is especially fond of this kind of drink! Which is called borubona, from the American prefecture of Kentukki.”

  Yoshitoshi twisted the cork loose and dribbled bourbon into all three cups. “Shouldn’t we heat it first?” Encho said.

  “This isn’t sake, my friend. Sometimes they even put ice in it!”

  Onogawa sipped carefully and gasped. “What a bite this has! It burns the tongue like Chinese peppers.” He hesitated. “Interesting, though.”

  “It’s good!” said Encho, surprised. “If sake were like an old stone lantern, then this borybona would be gaslight! Hot and fierce!” He tossed back the rest of his cup. “It’s a pity there’s no pretty girl to serve us our second round.”

  Yoshitoshi did the honors, filling their cups again. “This serving girl,” Onogawa said. “She would have to be hot and fierce too—like a tigress.”

  Encho lifted his brows. “You surprise me. I thought you were a family man, my friend.”

  A warm knot of bourbon in Onogawa’s stomach was reawakening an evening’s worth of sake. “Oh, I suppose I seem settled enough now. But you should have known me ten years ago, before the Restoration. I was quite the tough young radical in those days. You know, we really thought we could change the world. And perhaps we did!”

  Encho grinned, amused. “So! You were a shishi?”

  Onogawa had another sip. “Oh, yes!” He touched the middle of his back. “I had hair down to here, and I never washed! Touch money? Not a one of us! We’d have died first! No, we lived in rags and ate plain brown rice from wooden bowls. We just went to our kendo schools, practiced swordsmanship, decided what old fool we should try to kill next…” Onogawa shook his head ruefully. The other two were listening with grave attention.

  The bourbon and the reminiscing had thawed Onogawa out. The lost ideals of the Restoration rose up within him irresistibly. “I was the despair of my family,” he confided. “I abandoned my clan and my daimyo. We shishi radicals, you know, we believed only in our swords and the Emperor. Sonno joi! Remember that slogan?” Onogawa grinned, the tears of mono no aware, the pathos of lost things, coming to his eyes.

  “Sonno joi! The very streets used to ring with it. ‘Revere the Emperor, destroy the foreigners!’ We wanted the Emperor restored to full and unconditional power! We demanded it in the streets! Because the Shogun’s men were acting like frightened old women. Frightened of the black ships, the American black warships with their steam and cannon. Admiral Perry’s ships.”

  “It’s pronounced ‘Peruri,’” Encho corrected gently.

  “Peruri, then…I admit, we shishi went a bit far. We had some bad habits. Like threatening to commit hara-kiri unless the townsfolk gave us food. That’s one of the problems we faced because we refused to touch money. Some of the shopkeepers still resent the way we shishi used to push them around. In fact that was the cause of tonight’s incident after your performance, Encho. Some rude fellows with long memories.”

  “So that was it,” Encho said. “I wondered.”

  “Those were special times,” Onogawa said. “They changed me, they changed everything. I suppose everyone of this generation knows where they were, and what they were doing, when the foreigners arrived in Edo Bay.”

  “I remember,” said Yoshitoshi. “I was fourteen and an apprentice at Kuniyoshi’s studio. And I’d just done my first print. The Heike Clan Sink to Their Horrible Doom in the Sea.”

  “I saw them dance once,” Encho said. “The American sailors, I mean.”

  “Really?” said Onogawa.

  Encho cast a storyteller’s mood with an irresistible gesture. “Yes, my father, Entaro, took me. The performance was restricted to the Shogun’s court officials and their friends, but we managed to sneak in. The foreigners painted their faces and hands quite black. They seemed ashamed of their usual pinkish color, for they also painted broad white lines around their lips. Then they all sat on chairs together in a row, and one at a time they would stand up and shout dialogue. A second foreigner would answer, and they would all laugh. Later two of them strummed on strange round-bodied samisens, with long thin necks. And they sang mournful songs, very badly. Then they played faster songs and capered and danced, kicking out their legs in the oddest way, and flinging each other about. Some of the Shogun’s counselors danced with them.” Encho shrugged. “It was all very odd. To this day I wonder what it meant.”

  “Well,” said Onogawa. “Clearly they were trying to change their appearance and shape, like foxes or badgers. That seems clear enough.”

  “That’s as much as saying they’re magicians,” Encho said, shaking his head. “Just because they have long noses, doesn’t mean they’re mountain goblins. They’re men—they eat, they sleep, they want a woman. Ask the geishas in Yokohama if that’s not so.” Encho smirked. “Their real power is in the spirits of copper wires and black iron and burning coal. Like our own Tokyo-Yokohama Railway that the hired English built for us. You’ve ridden it, of course?”

  “Of course!” Onogawa said proudly. “I’m a modern sort of fellow.”

  “That’s the sort of power we need today. Civilization and Enlightenment. When you rode the train, did you see how the backward villagers in Omori come out to pour water on the engine? To cool it off, as if the railway engine were a tired horse!” Encho shook his head in contempt.

  Onogawa accepted another small cup of bourbon. “So they pour water,” he said judiciously. “Well, I can’t see that it does any harm.”

  “It’s rank superstition!” said Encho. “Don’t you see, we have to learn to deal with those machine-spirits, just as the foreigners do. Treating them as horses can only insult them. Isn’t that so, Taiso?”

  Yoshitoshi looked up guiltily from his absentminded study of his latest drawing. “I’m sorry, Encho-san, you were saying?”

  “Wh
at’s that you’re working on? May I see?” Encho crept nearer.

  Yoshitoshi hastily plucked out pins and rolled up his paper. “Oh, no, no, you wouldn’t want to see this one just yet. It’s not ready. But I can show you another recent one…” He reached to a nearby stack and dexterously plucked a printed sheet from the unsteady pile. “I’m calling this series Beauties of the Seven Nights.”

  Encho courteously held up the print so that both he and Onogawa could see it. It showed a woman in her underrobe; she had thrown her scarlet-lined outer kimono over a nearby screen. She had both natural and artificial eyebrows, lending a double seductiveness to her high forehead. Her mane of jet black hair had a killing little wispy fringe at the back of the neck; it seemed to cry out to be bitten. She stood at some lucky man’s doorway, bending to blow out the light of a lantern in the hall. And her tiny, but piercingly red mouth was clamped down over a roll of paper towels.

  “I get it!” Onogawa said. “That beautiful whore is blowing out the light so she can creep into some fellow’s bed in the dark! And she’s taking those handy paper towels in her teeth to mop up with, after they’re through playing mortar-and-pestle.”

  Encho examined the print more closely. “Wait a minute,” he said. “This caption reads ‘Her Ladyship Yanagihara Aiko.’ This is an Imperial lady-in-waiting!”

  “Some of my newspaper friends gave me the idea,” Yoshitoshi said, nodding. “Why should prints always be of tiresome, stale old actors and warriors and geishas? This is the modern age!”

  “But this print, Taiso…it clearly implies that the Emperor sleeps with his ladies-in-waiting.”

  “No, just with Lady Yanagihara Aiko,” Yoshitoshi said reasonably. “After all, everyone knows she’s his special favorite. The rest of the Seven Beauties of the Imperial Court are drawn, oh, putting on their makeup, arranging flowers, and so forth.” He smiled. “I expect big sales from this series. It’s very topical, don’t you think?”

  Onogawa was shocked. “But this is rank scandal-mongering! What happened to the good old days, with the nice gouts of blood and so on?”

  “No one buys those anymore!” Yoshitoshi protested. “Believe me, I’ve tried everything! I did A Yoshitoshi Miscellany of Figures from Literature. Very edifying, beautifully drawn classical figures, the best. It died on the stands. Then I did Raving Beauties at Tokyo Restaurants. Really hot girls, but old-fashioned geishas done in the old style. Another total waste of time. We were dead broke, not a copper piece to our names! I had to pull up the floorboards of my house for fuel! I had to work on fabric designs—two yen for a week’s work! My wife left me! My apprentices walked out! And then my health…my brain began to…I had nothing to eat…nothing…But…But that’s all over now.”

  Yoshitoshi shook himself, dabbed sweat from his pasty upper lip, and poured another cup of bourbon with a steady hand. “I changed with the times, that’s all. It was a hard lesson, but I learned it. I call myself Taiso now, Taiso, meaning ‘Great Rebirth.’ Newspapers! That’s where the excitement is today! Tokyo Illustrated News pays plenty for political cartoons and murder illustrations. They do ten thousand impressions at a stroke. My work goes everywhere—not just Edo, the whole nation. The nation, gentlemen!” He raised his cup and drank. “And that’s just the beginning. The Lamp of Liberty is knocking them dead! The Liberal Party committee has promised me a raise next year, and my own rickshaw.”

  “But I like the old pictures,” Onogawa said.

  “Maybe you do, but you don’t buy them,” Yoshitoshi insisted. “Modern people want to see what’s happening now! Take an old theme picture—Yorimitsu chopping an ogre’s arm off, for instance. Draw a thing like that today and it gets you nowhere. People’s tastes are more refined today. They want to see real cannonballs blowing off real arms. Like my eyewitness illustrations of the Battle of Ueno. A sensation! People don’t want print peddlers anymore. ‘Journalist illustrator’—that’s what they call me now.”

  “Don’t laugh,” said Encho, nodding in drunken profundity. “You should hear what they say about me. I mean the modern writer fellows, down from the University. They come in with their French novels under their arms, and their spectacles and slicked-down hair, and all sit in the front row together. So I tell them a vaudeville tale or two. Am I ‘spinning a good yarn’? Not anymore. They tell me I’m ‘creating naturalistic prose in a vigorous popular vernacular.’ They want to publish me in a book.” He sighed and had another drink. “This stuff’s poison, Taiso. My head’s spinning.”

  “Mine, too,” Onogawa said. An autumn wind had sprung up outside. They sat in doped silence for a moment. They were all much drunker than they had realized. The foreign liquor seemed to bubble in their stomachs like tofu fermenting in a tub.

  The foreign spirits had crept up on them. The very room itself seemed drunk. Wind sang through the telegraph wires outside Yoshitoshi’s shuttered window. A low eerie moan.

  The moan built in intensity. It seemed to creep into the room with them. The walls hummed with it. Hair rose on their arms.

  “Stop that!” Yoshitoshi said suddenly. Encho stopped his ventriloquial moaning, and giggled. “He’s trying to scare us,” Yoshitoshi said. “He loves ghost stories.”

  Onogawa lurched to his feet. “Demon in the wires,” he said thickly. “I heard it moaning at us.” He blinked, red-faced, and staggered to the shuttered window. He fumbled loudly at the lock, ignoring Yoshitoshi’s protests, and flung it open.

  Moonlit wire clustered at the top of a wooden pole, in plain sight a few feet away. It was a junction of cables, and leftover coils of wire dangled from the pole’s crossarm like thin black guts. Onogawa flung up the casement with a bang. A chilling gust of fresh air entered the stale room, and the prints danced on the walls. “Hey, you foreign demon!” Onogawa shouted. “Leave honest men in peace!”

  The artist and entertainer exchanged unhappy glances. “We drank too much,” Encho said. He lurched to his knees and onto one unsteady foot. “Leave off, big fellow. What we need now…” He belched. “Women, that’s what.”

  But the air outside the window seemed to have roused Onogawa. “We didn’t ask for you!” he shouted. “We don’t need you! Things were fine before you came, demon! You and your foreign servants…” He turned half-round, looking red-eyed into the room. “Where’s my pipe? I’ve a mind to give these wires a good thrashing.”

  He spotted the pipe again, stumbled into the room and picked it up. He lost his balance for a moment, then brandished the pipe threateningly. “Don’t do it,” Encho said, getting to his feet. “Be reasonable. I know some girls in Asakusa, they have a piano…” He reached out.

  Onogawa shoved him aside. “I’ve had enough!” he announced. “When my blood’s up, I’m a different man! Cut them down before they attack first, that’s my motto! Sonno joi!”

  He lurched across the room toward the open window. Before he could reach it there was a sudden hiss of steam, like the breath of a locomotive. The demon, its patience exhausted by Onogawa’s taunts, gushed from its wire. It puffed through the window, a gray gaseous thing, its lumpy misshapen head glaring furiously. It gave a steam-whistle roar, and its great lantern eyes glowed.

  All three men screeched aloud. The armless, legless monster, like a gray cloud on a tether, rolled its glassy eyes at all of them. Its steel teeth gnashed, and sparks showed down its throat. It whistled again and made a sudden gnashing lurch at Onogawa.

  But Onogawa’s old sword-training had soaked deep into his bones. He leapt aside reflexively, with only a trace of stagger, and gave the thing a smart overhead riposte with his pipe. The demon’s head bonged like an iron kettle. It began chattering angrily, and hot steam curled from its nose. Onogawa hit it again. Its head dented. It winced, then glared at the other men.

  The townsmen quickly scrambled into line behind their champion. “Get him!” Encho shrieked. Onogawa dodged a halfhearted snap of teeth and bashed the monster across the eye. Glass cracked and the bowl flew from Onogawa’s pip
e.

  But the demon had had enough. With a grumble and crunch like dying gearworks, it retreated back toward its wires, sucking itself back within them, like an octopus into its hole. It vanished, but hissing sparks continued to drip from the wire.

  “You humiliated it!” Encho said, his voice filled with awe and admiration. “That was amazing!”

  “Had enough, eh!” shouted Onogawa furiously, leaning on the sill. “Easy enough mumbling your dirty spells behind our backs! But try an Imperial warrior face to face, and it’s a different story! Hah!”

  “What a feat of arms!” said Yoshitoshi, his pudgy face glowing. “I’ll do a picture. Onogawa Humiliates a Ghoul. Wonderful!”

  The sparks began to travel down the wire, away from the window. “It’s getting away!” Onogawa shouted. “Follow me!”

  He shoved himself from the window and ran headlong from the studio. He tripped at the top of the stairs, but did an inspired shoulder-roll and landed on his feet at the door. He yanked it open.

  Encho followed him headlong. They had no time to lace on their leather shoes, so they kicked on the wooden clogs of Yoshitoshi and his apprentice and dashed out. Soon they stood under the wires, where the little nest of sparks still clung. “Come down here, you rascal,” Onogawa demanded. “Show some fighting honor, you skulking, wretch!”

  The thing moved back and forth, hissing, on the wire. More sparks dripped. It dodged back and forth, like a cornered rat in an alley. Then it made a sudden run for it.

  “It’s heading south!” said Onogawa. “Follow me!”

  They ran in hot pursuit, Encho bringing up the rear, for he had slipped his feet into the apprentice’s clogs and the shoes were too big for him.

  They pursued the thing across the Ginza. It had settled down to headlong running now, and dropped fewer sparks.