“They don’t understand why we refuse to trade. They believe quite firmly in the benefits of trade and open markets. They see it as a simple matter. They will come to trade, and they will fire their guns if we refuse. Their newspapers beat a drum, shouting they need to show us a thing or two. Their common people may not know the difference between China and Japan, but they are all convinced we must open to American goods and American traders. They are eager to send warships to make the point.”
“My lords, there is still time.” Tōru continued, his words flowing quickly as his excitement grew. “Lord Aya, in those books I brought back, I have designs to build the latest defenses and weapons, weapons the Americans have not even built yet. I have plans for experimental airships, flying ships they call ‘dirigibles,’ or drivable airships. I have designs for factories, machines that can churn out mountains of goods for us to sell through the traders protected by the southern lords. We need to create wealth so we can afford weapons. My lords, I know how to do this. Let me—“
Lord Tōmatsu cut him off. “There are many ears, even within these walls. I plan to keep my head safe from both the Shogun’s men and the Americans, so be quiet about your ideas.”
Lord Aya nodded agreement. “You will ride with us tomorrow? I’m taking the boy to see his mother before we send him to Edo for execution.” He looked around, listening for eavesdroppers beyond the paper walls. He knew his daughter listened near the door, but he did not know who might be listening behind other walls.
Lord Tōmatsu nodded, and poured another round of saké for the men, including Tōru. “Try this. It’s excellent.”
Tōru and the lords drank far into the night, with Tōru teaching them American sailor songs in English. The lords sang with gusto, the wretchedness of their English accents surpassed only by the vast quantities of saké they consumed. Under the circumstances, enjoying a night of excellent local saké was a commendable plan. Developing a better plan, for himself and for Japan, would have to wait until the hangover wore off.
Masuyo slipped away after the men began to sing. She stayed up late into the night, reading Tōru’s journal, puzzling over the diagrams in the English books and making notes. She knew well the suffering of the Chinese people as foreigner invaders had taken over Chinese ports and demanded trading privileges. Masuyo knew her father feared the same fate for Japan. Her mind, clear and sober, turned to the making of plans.
CHAPTER 4
DESOLATION
“They are gone and I am left
and they have taken with them the world.”
– Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Lord Tōmatsu joined their travel party, bringing along Sugieda, his right-hand man, and a few retainers. For two more days the party traveled north along the winding coast. Lord Aya no longer required that Tōru be bound, but let him ride freely on the cook’s horse. Tōru, grown comfortable in their presence, boasted of the fine meal they would enjoy when they arrived at his mother’s home.
“It will be simple, my lords, for we are simple folk in my village, but oh so delicious. Fresh fish, vegetables grown by the sea, flavored with herbs, fruit from our small orchard, dumplings so soft and delicate you could serve them in your own castles. My mother is the best cook in our village, maybe the whole realm! You will see.”
The lords laughed and promised to test out her cooking for themselves, a most unusual promise for daimyōs to make about a meal served by a fisherman’s woman, but they too had grown comfortable with the young man, his quick intelligence, rich supply of stories and ready laugh. On the road, as pilgrims and other travelers know, sometimes the rules are relaxed.
Lord Aya found himself watching the young man fondly. For days, no one had mentioned the requirement to send Tōru to the Shogun in Edo for execution. No one watching the group would have thought Tōru a prisoner, but rather imagined him a guide of some kind, leading the lords through his territory.
Masuyo rode along in her norimono, carefully ignored by Lord Tōmatsu, who found her presence as unseemly as did his wife. She listened attentively to every word the men uttered. She knew better than to embarrass her father in front of the great lord by attempting to join the conversation, but Tōru noticed she beat on the roof of her norimono every time it fell behind to urge her bearers forward so she could hear better.
As they rode along, the two lords discussed the local landscape, noting defensible positions on hills overlooking the sea and arguing over how many great guns might be needed to drive the Americans off. Tōru listened respectfully for a time and then broke in.
“The Americans will not attack our coasts here. They want trade in the great cities, in Edo, in Nagasaki, in Hiroshima. They may want water and coaling stations for their ships here, but they would not waste ammunition brought from so far away on villagers on this empty coast. No, it is Edo we must defend, for our capital is where they will come with their ambassadors and their warships.”
Lord Tōmatsu grumbled. “Then let the Shogun defend Edo and old Nabeshima defend Nagasaki. They grab enough taxes, trade and tribute from all of us to buy lots of guns.”
Lord Aya nodded. “But the Shogun and his weak-kneed Council won’t let us arm with modern weapons. We can’t fight them off with rusty blades.”
“The Shogun is more afraid of Satsuma than he is of the Americans,” continued Lord Tomatsu. “He would rather fall to the Americans than to Shimazu.”
A queer look crossed Tōru’s face at the mention of Lord Shimazu, daimyō of the Satsuma realm. Masuyo beckoned him to her, leaning out of her norimono in a perilous and unladylike manner.
She whispered to him, “Fisherman, what counsel would you give the Shogun?”
Her father glared at her, to make her behave in front of Lord Tōmatsu and retreat back into her palanquin. Lord Aya said nothing rather than call more attention to her bad behavior. Masuyo flashed her father a brilliant smile and slipped back inside her norimono, beckoning to Tōru to lean in to speak with her.
Lord Tōmatsu held forth on the Shogun’s weakness while Masuyo and Tōru whispered a few steps behind.
Tōru whispered, “I would tell the Shogun to unite Japan, to bring together all the hans. The Shogun needs Satsuma and all the lords to strengthen themselves and their people if he is to meet the foreigners with strength. If he keeps us weak, we will not be able to stand against them. They will tear us apart, like the British are devouring China.”
Masuyo nodded. For all the sakoku isolation policy, educated Japanese like her father knew Chinese ports had fallen to the British warships virtually without a fight. The British then demanded ever more trading rights and favorable treatment even as they flooded China with opium, rotting her from within, as their ships bore away mountains of Chinese silver.
Tōru continued, “But if each han domain is strong, and stands with the others, together we can fight off the Americans.”
“Big words, fisherman.” Masuyo held him with a steady gaze, most unlike the demure downward glances of most Japanese young women and well-brought up American women.
Tōru did his best to return her gaze.
“You are not so bold in your journals. Here,” she pointed at a page in his forceful script, “you write that they are unbeatable. You marvel at the training they give the common foot soldiers. You admire their officer training, how they use even the common people in their armies and navies. And here,” she stabbed at another page, “you describe their factories as endless and huge, filled with hundreds of workers in every one, making guns and trains and stoves. Which is true, fisherman? That the Americans are powerful or that we can beat them?”
“Both, my lady. They are powerful. More powerful than you can imagine. And we can beat them.”
Masuyo was ready with her next question, but she had to wait for another day to ask it. Night was falling.
They had arrived at Tōru’s village.
Lord Aya pulled up. Tōru rode up to his side as they overlooked the village below, nestled in a semi
-circle by a small harbor. “Where is your mother’s house?” asked the daimyō.
Tōru looked, squinting into the setting sun. He shaded his eyes with his hand, searching for the torchlight where her home would be. He saw nothing. He pointed to where it should be, on the far side of the village, beyond the small docks where a few fishing boats were tied up and up another hill. “Over there. But I don’t see a light. May we—.”
“Let’s go.”
They headed down the hill and through the village, riding in a long column of the lords, their retainers, the servants and Masuyo’s norimono and bearers. Parties with daimyōs and samurai on horseback were rare in this village. The frightened villagers hid, their few encounters with armed men usually ending badly for them. Even the children playing in the dusty main road scampered away, pulled indoors by whispered commands from hidden mothers. Eyes peered out at them from behind nearly shuttered windows and through half-open doors leading into shadowed interiors.
Tōru looked around in vain for a familiar face, but saw only shadows as everyone slipped away. The village looked more worn and shabby than he remembered, with a few familiar buildings like the old saké distillery and the rice shop in disrepair.
At last they climbed back up out of the village. Soon they stood before his mother’s home up on the hill.
Tōru dismounted.
No one was there.
One look told them the house had been empty a year or more.
A loose shutter banged loudly against the house as the evening breeze picked up off the sea. The front door was ajar, broken open as though by thieves in search of loot. Weeds, vigorous in the humid warm climate, grew up around the steps. Unkempt and tangled fruit trees surrounded the house. The small garden where his mother had grown a few vegetables and herbs held only weeds and a few scraggly herbs, overgrown and ragged.
The others waited, silent, mounted, while Tōru climbed the steps to the house and pried open the broken door.
Inside the darkness of the unlit dwelling, he found only more emptiness and destruction.
The small mirrored kyodai vanity his mother had knelt before as she brushed out her hair in the evenings was overturned and smashed. Broken glass littered the tatami mats from the shattered mirror. The drawers were all pulled out and scattered around. A few shards of broken bowls and cups crunched underfoot as he drew open the shōji to look at the small room behind where he had slept as a boy. Nothing. Only the evening breeze, blowing strongly now off the sea, poured through the broken window and fluttered the torn paper of the shōji.
Tōru stepped across the worn tatami mats to the window. He looked out over the sea, silvery under the same rising moon that had guided him ashore just a few days earlier.
A man doesn’t cry.
But a man can mourn his mother, alone in a darkened room, for a moment, before going outside to be a man who weeps not.
He heard a small step behind him.
Tōru whirled around.
Masuyo stood there in the shadows, looking nearly as stricken as he felt. For once she said nothing, but only looked up at him.
“We’d best head into the village and see about a meal and shelter for the night. This won’t do for the daimyōs and you, my lady,” he said in a strangled gruff voice.
Little was said. Polite men, even rough warriors, do not show they notice when another man is gripped by grief, even if he is their prisoner. But the effort to overlook Tōru’s grief was exhausting for everyone, especially after the long trip. They lapsed into silence as they rode down the hill into the village. Now speckled with lanterns and torches, the village had come alive while they explored the dead and empty house.
They found shelter in the village’s only inn, a large and ancient house brought low by neglect and hard times. Separate rooms were provided for Masuyo and each of the lords; the retainers and servants had to double and triple up. Tōru was sent to sleep in the stable, but no one gave the order to bind him. He slumped down in the straw and fell into the deep sleep of the young and weary.
The tavern keeper’s wife brought out steaming bowls of noodles with a few thin slices of fish and pickles, while the tavern keeper poured saké for each of the guests. The cook was dispatched to rouse Tōru and bring him in to eat.
The lords sat together on the floor at a small low table. Masuyo knelt nearby at another table. The servants shared yet another low table, while Tōru and the retainers clustered together, not quite prisoner and guards, not quite traveling companions, seated on the floor along the long main table in the low-ceilinged dining area.
Tōru ate in silence. The retainers grew boisterous and even ventured a few songs, fueled by saké. The men forced themselves to be cheerful rather than embarrass Tōru by focusing on his grief.
A few villagers sat at the other end of the long table. They talked quietly among themselves as they too hoisted cups of saké and stole glances at the strangers.
One of them pointed at Tōru. They began to whisper and stare.
Tōru didn’t notice them, lost in his thoughts.
Suddenly one of the villagers, wearing his leather blacksmith’s apron and filthy hapi jacket over equally filthy loose trousers and sooty feet, jumped up from his seat and ran over to Tōru. He bowed low in the exuberant and awkward way of the lowborn. “Himasaki-sama! Welcome home, sir!” shouted out the blacksmith as he nearly knocked his head on the tatami mats in front of Tōru.
All eyes turned to Tōru. He stared at the filthy man through the filter of a few flagons of saké and a long hard day, unable to place him after two years away.
The blacksmith continued. “It’s me, Jiro!” He indicated his blacksmith’s outfit. “We thought you were dead! The storm… Where have you been?”
Tōru’s head cleared and he recognized Jiro. He motioned with his hand for Jiro to stop bowing. He hissed an urgent whisper, so low the daimyō’s retainers could not make out the words. “Not here. I’m just Tōru. Not Himasaki. Tōru. Fisherman.” He signaled with his chin for Jiro to get off the floor and stop bowing so deeply. The ruckus had caught the attention of the daimyōs as well.
Tōru stood, still signaling to Jiro with his eyes to stop making such a fuss. He made himself ask the only question that mattered. “Jiro, friend, do you know where I can find my mother?”
Jiro nodded “no,” sobering up from his enthusiastic welcome. “She left in the night, a month after you died. I mean, after we thought you died, in the storm.”
The quiet hum of conversation in the wide room dropped to near silence as every ear in the room focused on Jiro’s story. “She didn’t say where she was going. Just left a few things, dishes, pots, blankets and such, neatly piled up and wrapped, on people’s doorsteps, as though to let us know she wasn’t coming back. Left my mother her best kimono. She left her home empty, all closed up. We tried to watch over it for her, in case she came back. Some thieves broke in and ransacked whatever was left last year. I’m sorry, sir—.” At Tōru’s urgent look, Jiro amended his respectful language and slipped into more informal speech. “I’m sorry, Tōru. I wish I had better news. You came to see her?”
Tōru nodded, mute.
The daimyōs stood, and all their men with them, signaling an end to the evening. As each went off to their respective rooms, Masuyo shot Tōru a questioning glance, and was met only with a “Not now” nod. Tōru went out to the stable, with Jiro trailing after him.
In the stable, Jiro reverted to respectful address. “Sir, Himasaki-sama, I am sorry for your loss. We all thought you were dead. Your mother, too. She barely spoke a word after you vanished. Every night she would stand there, up on her hill. Looking out over the ocean, like she was watching for you. Your lord father never came again, either.”
Tōru waved him to silence. “Never speak of my father, here or to any of them. They don’t know who he is, who I am. I am just Tōru, a fisherman from Iwamatsu, and I have lost my mother, a fisherman’s wife. Do not bow to me. Please treat me like you would your young
er brother, not—not anyone special. They mustn’t know.” His voice was urgent, commanding.
Jiro considered this.
His world was a simple one, full of people he must bow to and those he need not bow to but could befriend. Tōru was asking him to overlook a simple pillar of his universe, to neglect to bow to your betters and pretend instead they were as close and familiar as brothers. Jiro struggled to work out the not-bowing part, for Tōru fell into the group to whom Jiro must bow.
The truth was, they were close as brothers, and they were good friends. They had grown up and gotten into countless scrapes together as they worked their way through the pranks of small boys in a village. Stealing fruit, swiping saké, building forts and fighting battles against hordes of enemy samurai only they could see, admiring the prettiest girls in the village. But there had always been a high and unmentioned barrier between the two boys.
Tōru had a mysterious father who would ride into the village every month or so, dressed in traveling clothes, without mark or insignia, but of fine make, riding on a good horse. He would visit Tōru’s mother and then take his son away for a day or a week, sometimes even a month at a time. No one in the village knew his name, for he never greeted any of them, but only rode straight to Tōru’s mother’s home and stayed a night or two before leaving again with Tōru.
When Tōru came back from these trips, he would never explain to Jiro where he had been or what he had done, but he would be full of new facts and skills and information. Like how to read, or the right way to hold their stick swords when fighting imaginary samurai enemies, or how to mount a horse, or who the British and Dutch and Chinese were. Jiro avidly learned the bits about sword fighting and fervently wished he had a horse of his own to practice riding. He didn’t care about the differences between the British and the Dutch. Foreigners were all foreigners, and well, foreign and unlikely to enter his world.
Tōru tried to teach Jiro to read, and had even managed to get him to scratch out his name and a few basic characters. But Jiro didn’t take to the written word. He always protested his head was too thick to hold all the kanji characters and he would rather practice with swords or do something useful like fish or work on his blacksmithing at the forge where he was apprenticed. He was an excellent blacksmith, in fact, and had taken over the forge for the village at a young age when the old blacksmith died suddenly one winter of a bad heart.
Toru: Wayfarer Returns (Sakura Steam Series Book 1) Page 4