Sano Ichiro 10 The Assassin's Touch (2005)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Reiko climbed out of the palanquin. As she looked around, her face flinched at the stink of the garbage heaps where buzzing flies swarmed and children, rats, and stray dogs foraged. But curiosity stirred within her. She’d seen hinin settlements but never been in one; polite custom kept ladies of her class out of them as strictly as the law divided the outcasts from the rest of society. Eager to explore and learn whatever she could here about Yugao and the murders, Reiko started across the weedy, muddy ground toward the settlement. She gathered her plain gray cotton cloak around her. She wore straw sandals instead of her usual clogs made of lacquered wood. Her hair was done in a simple knot with no ornaments, her face adorned with minimal powder and rouge. Her guards wore swords and armor tunics, but no crests to signify who their master was. Reiko intended their mission to be as covert as possible, thus keeping her promise to Sano.

  Voices raucous with laughter and argument resounded from the tents as Reiko neared the settlement. Outcasts, mainly men, loitered around campfires where rotting fish sizzled in rancid grease. Five of the men hastened toward Reiko’s party. They wore tattered short kimonos and leggings, with clubs and daggers at their waists. They had shaggy hair, grime ingrained in their skin, and hostile faces.

  “What do you want?” one of the men said to Reiko’s guards. His arms were covered with tattoos, the mark of gangsters. He and his companions blocked the path.

  “Greetings,” Reiko’s chief escort said politely. He was Lieutenant Asukai, a tough young samurai who would have ordinarily told these ruffians to step aside, and dispersed them by force if necessary. But Reiko had ordered him and the others to be discreet. “My master’s lady wants to talk to a few people here.”

  The tattooed man scowled. “Sure, and I’m His Excellency the shogun. You samurai come here to pick on us hinin. You think you can kill us just because the law lets you get away with it.” Reiko realized that this must be a common problem for the outcasts. “Well, not today.” He and his men drew their daggers. Other outcasts emerged from the tents, brandishing clubs, spears. “Get lost.”

  “Wait.” Lieutenant Asukai raised his hands in a placating gesture while his comrades clustered protectively around Reiko. “We’re not here to make trouble. We just want to talk.” His manner was calm, but although he and his comrades were trained, expert fighters and the outcasts were unskilled thugs, they were outnumbered. Reiko felt a pang of fear. She’d been caught in fights before, and she didn’t want to repeat the experience.

  “I said, get lost.” The tattooed leader spoke with the brazen air of a man who was angry at the world and hadn’t much to lose. “Go, or die.”

  The other outcasts echoed him with savage, enthusiastic roars. They didn’t wait to see if Reiko and her guards would leave, but quickly surrounded them. Blades pointed toward Reiko; clubs rose to strike; faces avid for a fight stared down her guards. Metal rasped as the guards drew their swords. People hurried from the dump and the settlement to watch. Dismay filled Reiko because her investigation had barely begun, and already she’d landed in trouble.

  A loud, authoritative male voice demanded, “What’s going on here?”

  The outcasts turned toward the settlement. Their circle loosened, and Reiko saw a man, followed by two others, striding toward her. Perhaps forty years of age, he had surly yet handsome features shadowed by whisker stubble; he carried a spear upraised in his fist. His kimono, trousers, and surcoat had the same grimy look as the other outcasts’ clothing, but were made of silk. His hair was combed and oiled into a neat topknot. He had the noble bearing of a samurai, even though his crown wasn’t shaved and he wore no swords. His men resembled the other outcasts; they were clearly commoners. He halted and panned his dark gaze over the crowd.

  “We’re just trying to get rid of these trespassers before they hurt somebody,” said the tattooed ruffian.

  The man studied Reiko’s party with suspicion. “I’m Kanai Juzaemon, the headman of this village.” Everyone in society was regimented and every neighborhood had its appointed official, no less the hinin settlement. His two names identified Kanai as a member of the warrior class. “Who are you?”

  Lieutenant Asukai muttered to Reiko, “Maybe we’d better tell the truth.”

  Reiko didn’t see much other choice. “I’m the daughter of the magistrate,” she said. But at least she could hide her connection with Chamberlain Sano. “My name is Reiko. We’re here because my father asked me to investigate the murder of the family of a woman named Yugao.”

  The headman looked at her as if surprised that she’d spoken for herself as well as by what she’d said. He signaled the outcasts to lower their weapons; they obeyed. As Reiko wondered how a samurai had become their leader, he said, “Would your father be Magistrate Ueda?”

  “Yes,” Reiko said, cautious because she heard distrust in his voice.

  “Magistrate Ueda demoted me to hinin status. He did the same to many people here.”

  Unfriendly echoes of agreement arose from the crowd. Reiko regretted mentioning her father, whose name was unlikely to win her favor among the outcasts. Her guards braced for an attack.

  “But the magistrate’s word is the law,” Kanai said with fatalistic gloom. “I suppose that means we have to accommodate his daughter.” He waved his spear at the crowd. “Go about your business.”

  The ruffians and spectators slunk away. Relief overwhelmed Reiko. Her guards let out their breath while they sheathed their swords.

  “What exactly does she want to do?” the headman asked Lieutenant Asukai.

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  Kanai looked increasingly baffled by the unconventional circumstance of a magistrate’s daughter investigating a crime. He turned his quizzical gaze on Reiko.

  “First I’d like to see the place were the murders happened,” Reiko said.

  “Suit yourself.” The headman shrugged, perplexed yet resigned. “But I’d better take you. It should be obvious by now that you’re not especially welcome here.”

  He led the way into the settlement. Two of Reiko’s guards preceded her and the others; the headman’s comrades brought up the rear. As they wove between the tents, the occupants stared at them with sullen curiosity. Some followed Reiko and her party; soon she had a long entourage. So much for a discreet investigation; Reiko could only hope that news of her doings wouldn’t reach anyone in a position to hurt Sano.

  The ground under her feet was trampled flat and hard, its surface muddy and slick from water spilled by women washing laundry or cleaning fish. The foul odor of human waste and stagnant cesspools sickened Reiko. There was obviously no night soil collection here. Bonfires burned garbage that hadn’t made its way to the dump; there was no trash collection here, either. Reiko felt filth wetting her socks and hem. How could these people bear living in such squalor?

  Her party reached the hovels. Each tiny structure was a patchwork of boards scavenged from burned buildings and construction sites, barely high enough for a man to stand up inside. Their windows were holes covered with dirty paper, their roofs composed of thatch or cracked, broken tiles. Voices argued; a baby squalled. Reiko ducked under ragged clothes strung on lines between the hovels. She and her escorts squeezed past men playing cards in the narrow lanes. They stepped over a drunk who lay unconscious. At one hovel, a man counted coins into the hand of a slovenly woman.

  The vices flourished here.

  Smoke darkened the atmosphere like a perpetual twilight. The stench was concentrated, as if the outside air couldn’t penetrate. The fact that her father had sentenced people to this life made Reiko uncomfortable even if they’d deserved the punishment.

  “Here it is,” Kanai said, stopping outside a hovel. Two features distinguished it from the others—a lean-to built on one side, and a sprinkling of white salt crystals at the threshold, to purify a place where death had occurred. “There’s not much to see, but look all you want.” He held back the faded indigo cloth hung over the doorway.

  While th
e outcasts avidly watched, Reiko stepped inside. Murky daylight filtered through two windows. The sweet, metallic, and foul odors of rotting blood and flesh tainted the air. Reiko’s throat closed; nausea gripped her stomach. On the floor she saw dark patches where blood and viscera had been wiped up but had sunk into the packed earth. The hovel had one room plus an alcove formed by the lean-to; the whole space was smaller than her bedchamber at home. She could hardly believe that four people had lived here. It was empty except for a ceramic hearth in a corner.

  Kanai spoke from the door: “The neighbors looted everything that wasn’t too heavy to move—dishes, clothes, bedding. People here are so poor, they don’t mind robbing the dead.”

  Reiko saw that she wouldn’t find any evidence here. But although she felt the pollution of death seeping into her, and she was desperate to breathe pure air, she stayed, hoping to absorb clues from the crime scene. On one wall were jagged notches cut with a knife. Reiko counted thirty-eight, perhaps scores from card games. She sensed lingering emotions—rage, terror, despair.

  “Pardon my curiosity,” Kanai said, “but why did the magistrate send you to investigate the murders?”

  “I have some experience with such things.” Reiko forbore to mention her work for Sano.

  The headman frowned in disbelief; women didn’t ordinarily investigate crimes. Then he shrugged, too indifferent to press for an explanation. “But isn’t the case already solved? Yugao has been arrested.”

  “The magistrate and I both have doubts about whether she killed her family.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Kanai declared. “As far as I’m concerned, Yugao is guilty.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I was here that night. I discovered the murders. I caught Yugao.”

  Reiko had planned to search for the first witness at the scene after the murders; now luck had saved her the work. “Tell me what happened.”

  The headman’s expression said he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just accept his word as truth instead of bothering herself with hinin business, but again he shrugged. “My assistants and I were patrolling the settlement. Constant vigilance is the only way to keep order.” Reiko noted his upper-class diction. “We heard screams coming from this area.”

  Reiko pictured him and his men carrying torches through the dark settlement, the bonfires burning and the residents brawling in the night; she heard women screaming.

  “By the time we reached this house, the screams had stopped. The man was lying there.” Kanai pointed at a blood-soaked patch on the floor. “I think he died first. He was in bed. His wife lay there, and his younger daughter there.” Reiko followed his pointing finger to two other spots, across the room, where the floor was stained reddish-brown. “They’d been chased. You can see the bloody footprints.”

  Reiko also saw blood spattered on the plank walls and envisioned two terrified women running while a blade slashed them.

  “All the victims had been stabbed many times all over their bodies. They had cuts on their hands because they’d tried to defend themselves.” Kanai entered the hovel, stood in the center. “Yugao was sitting here, surrounded by the corpses. There was blood smeared on her face. Her clothes were drenched with it. She was holding the bloody knife.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen murders before—they’re not exactly rare here—but this one shocked me. I said to Yugao, ‘Merciful gods, what happened?’ ” Emotion colored his dispassionate tone. “She looked up at me, perfectly calm, and said, ‘I killed them.’ Well, that seemed obvious. So I turned her over to the police.”

  He’d confirmed what the doshin had said at Yugao’s trial. His description of that night brought it to vivid life for Reiko, who felt more inclined than ever to believe that Yugao was as guilty as she said. Yet Reiko couldn’t conclude her investigation based on the testimony of a witness who’d arrived at the scene after the murders were done.

  “When you came here that night, did you see anyone around besides Yugao?” Reiko asked.

  “Only some folks who’d come out of their houses to see what the commotion was.”

  Reiko must later determine whether the neighbors had noticed anyone near the house before the murders, or fleeing it afterward. “How well did you know the family?”

  “Well enough. They’d been here more than two years. They had about six more months left of their sentence.”

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  “The man’s name was Taruya. He once owned an entertainment hall in Ryōgoku. He was a wealthy, important merchant, but when he became a hinin, he got a job as an executioner at Edo Jail.” That was one of the lowly occupations assigned to the outcasts. “His wife O-aki and Yugao earned a little money by sewing. The younger daughter, Umeko, sold herself to men.” The headman pointed at the alcove. “That’s where she serviced them.”

  “I need to know why Yugao killed her family, if she did,” Reiko said.

  “She didn’t tell me, but she didn’t get along with them particularly well. They quarreled a lot. Neighbors were always complaining about the noise. Of course that’s nothing unusual here. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my seven years in this hell, it’s that when people are miserable and cooped up together, fights are bound to break out. Some little thing probably tipped Yugao over the edge.”

  Here Reiko saw a chance to answer at least one question. “Why did Yugao and her family become outcasts?”

  “Her father committed incest with Yugao.”

  Reiko knew that incest with a female relative was one of the crimes for which a man could be demoted to hinin, but she was nonetheless shocked. She’d heard gossip about men who satisfied their carnal lust on their daughters, but couldn’t understand how a father could do such a perverted, disgusting thing. “If Yugao’s father was the criminal, what were Yugao and her mother and sister doing here?”

  “They were three helpless women without any money to their own names. They depended on Taruya to support them. They had to move here with him or starve to death.”

  Which meant that the whole family—including Yugao—had shared his punishment. That seemed unfair, but Tokugawa law often punished a criminal’s family for his transgression. Reiko’s heartbeat quickened because she spied a possible motive for at least one of the murders. Had Yugao felt so soiled and shamed by the incest that she’d come to hate the father that tradition commanded her to respect and love? Had her hot temper ignited into murderous rage that night?

  Reiko gazed around the hovel. Her imagination populated the room with a man and three women seated at their evening meal. The faces of Yugao’s father, her mother, and the sister were indistinct; only Yugao’s features were in clear focus. Reiko heard their angry voices rise in a quarrel fostered by living in crowded conditions, not having enough to eat, and their mutual disgrace. She envisioned them hurling blows, dishes, and curses at one another. And perhaps the crime that had condemned them to their fate hadn’t stopped. Reiko imagined the hovel in the dark of that night. She saw two shadowy figures, Yugao and her father, in a bed superimposed over the largest blood-stained patch on the floor.

  He pins her down, his hand held over her face to muffle her cries as he thrusts himself against her. Nearby, her mother and sister lie asleep in their beds. After the illicit coupling is done, the father rolls off Yugao and falls asleep, while she seethes with ire. This night’s indignity has been one too many. Yugao has had enough.

  She rises, fetches a knife, and plunges it into her father’s chest. He awakens, howling in pain and surprise. He tries to seize the knife from her, but she slashes his hands and stabs him again and again. His cries rouse Yugao’s mother and sister. Horrified, they grab Yugao and pull her away from her father, but too late—he is dead. Yugao is so frenzied that she goes mad. She turns the knife on her mother and sister. She chases them, slashing and stabbing, while they scream in terror. Their feet leave bloody prints on the floor, until they fall lifeless.

  Yugao surveys her work. Her thirst for vengea
nce is satisfied; her frenzy turns to unnatural serenity. She sits down, the knife in her hands, and waits for whatever will come.

  The headman’s voice interrupted Reiko’s thoughts. “Have you seen enough?”

  The vision faded; Reiko blinked. She now had a plausible theory of why, and how, the murders happened, but it was mere speculation. She needed more evidence to support it before she told her father that Yugao was guilty and he should sentence her to death.

  “I’ve seen enough here,” she said. “Now I must talk to the family’s neighbors.” Maybe they’d seen something Kanai hadn’t. Had someone else entered the hovel and committed the murders? Had Yugao been an intended victim? That would leave questions as to why she’d survived—and confessed—but Reiko still sensed that there was more to the crime than she’d learned. “Will you guide me around the settlement and introduce me?”

  Kanai gave her a look of forbearance. “Whatever you want, but I think you’re wasting your time.”

  Reiko’s curiosity about the hinin extended to this man who’d become her willing, albeit skeptical, assistant. “May I ask how you became a hinin?”

  His face darkened with emotion; he turned away from her. “When I was young, I fell in love. She was a maid at a teahouse.” He spoke as though each word flayed him with a whip. “I was a samurai from a proud, ancient family.” Yet a hint of a smile said he took pleasure from wounding himself. “We wanted to marry, but we belonged to different worlds. We decided that if we couldn’t live together, we would die together. One night we went out to the Ryōgoku Bridge. We tied ourselves together with rope. We pledged eternal love. Then we jumped.”

  This was an old story, the subject of many Kabuki plays. Suicide pacts were popular among illicit lovers. Reiko said, “But you’re—”

  “Still alive,” Kanai said. “When we fell in the river, she drowned almost at once. She gave up her life easily. But I—” He drew a wavering breath. “It was as if my body had a will of its own, and it didn’t want to die. As the current swept us away, I struggled until the ropes that tied me to her came loose. I swam to a dock. A police officer found me there. Her body washed up downstream the next day. And I was made an outcast.”