Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

by Shusaku Endo

“Runaways!!” An officer at the rear of the rank suddenly shouted. Three of the peasants had managed to escape.

  “Get them!”

  The three fugitives quickly ran between houses and tried to hide themselves in the encroaching evening haze. Several policemen pursued them.

  The remaining prisoners were taken directly from the government office to the boat dock at Ōhato.

  The wind was strong, and the harbor waves were rough. At Ōhato several barges bobbing in the water awaited them.

  “On board! Quickly!!”

  The 111 peasants climbed one after another into the barges.

  “These fools tried to escape!” Two of the fugitives, their hands lashed behind them, were shoved to the edge of the water by policemen. As the others looked on, they were beaten and kicked, and finally were the last men put on board.

  “Kumazō got away!” One of the captured men whispered quietly to his fellow believers. “He can run fast, so he disappeared right away. I wonder where he’s hiding right now.”

  Apparently the officers and the police had given up chasing Kumazō; they ordered the boatmen to untie the mooring lines. The four barges, splashed by the waves, headed toward a steamship waiting in the middle of the harbor.

  The evening haze gave way to night. Lights flickered faintly from the base of Mount Inasa and the streets of Nagasaki. It was pitch black in the vicinity of Urakami. But the gaze of every one of the 113 prisoners was directed toward that darkened village of Urakami.

  They might not ever return home again. Perhaps they would be taken off somewhere and executed. If so, they would never again set foot on the soil of Urakami.

  And what about their family members who had followed them all the way to the government office? Where were their wives and children, their fathers and mothers, in that thick darkness? Did they have any idea that right now their loved ones were being loaded onto a ship and taken far from them?

  Every manner of thoughts clutched at their hearts. In earlier times the padres had told the ancestors of these peasants that God would grant happiness and triumph to those who believed in him, but in reality, all they had received was exile from their homes and separation from their families.

  The waves lapped noisily against the barges. Eventually they drew near to the black hull of the steamship, its sails billowing.

  “Mary full of grace …” As soon as one of the prisoners began to recite the oraçiõ to the Blessed Mother Mary, everyone else joined in. The officers and police who rode with them on the barges uttered no word of complaint.

  “Look! There’s a light at Urakami!” At that cry, everyone turned toward Urakami. There could be no doubt that the light was coming from the Ōura Church where they practiced their faith.

  “Say, do you think the padres know that we’re being led away like this?” someone asked. His voice was filled with loneliness and desolation.

  “They don’t know yet. If they did, they couldn’t abandon us like this.”

  “That’s true.” They all looked down and were silent for a time.

  But at that same moment, the priests at Ōura were in fact watching as the prisoners were transported on barges to the steamship.

  Three women had come stumbling into the church to notify them what was happening.

  The women were relatives of the 113 Kirishitans who were being hustled away. Some of them had been among the families and relatives of the prisoners who had been driven off by policemen with bludgeons but, not wanting to return to Urakami, had hidden and waited for their loved ones to reemerge from the government office.

  When these women saw their own husbands or siblings being taken to Ōhato and loaded onto barges, they raced along the beach to Ōura to seek help from the priests.

  As soon as he received the report, Laucaigne rushed to the French consulate in Nagasaki, but his efforts at intercession were fruitless. Governor Sawa stubbornly deflected all objections.

  All the other priests stood in the church’s garden gazing at the harbor. When they saw the barges lurching through the dark waters of the harbor toward the steamship, they rushed back to their house and ignited lights in the windows to let the prisoners know they were there. Those were the lights that the 113 Kirishitans saw….

  The priests’ view of the port was cut off by the darkness of the night. By now the harbor and Mount Inasa had all been dyed the same blackish color, and they could no longer see anything. They couldn’t even locate the steamship carrying the Kirishitans.

  Father Laucaigne returned from the consulate in a state of utter exhaustion. At his report, all the priests felt powerless, realizing there was now nothing they could do.

  “If only Petitjean were here …” At times like this, Laucaigne always wished that Petitjean were here. His timing was only a little off: he would be returning to Japan in another two or three days….

  “Let us pray for them.”

  All the priests knelt on the ground. Laucaigne prayed, “If it be possible, please let me take the place of these Japanese Kirishitans. These simple peasants are about to suffer in Thy name. Please include me in their suffering….”

  He thought he heard something far off in the distance, and he lifted his head. Father Cousin also seemed to have noticed, and he was straining to hear what it might be.

  “Écoutez!” Laucaigne pointed toward the harbor.

  They could hear faint voices mingled with the sound of the waves. It was the voices of many men singing.

  Let us go, let us go

  Let us go to the temple of Paraíso.

  Let us go, let us go

  Let us go to the temple of Paraíso.

  Their voices were muffled by the waves, then audible again.

  It was them! They were standing on the deck of the ship and raising their voices in song toward the church on the hill.

  “Let’s sing with them!” Father Cousin urged the others. The priests lifted their voices toward the shadowy harbor. Loud enough for the men in the boat to hear them….

  As for Kiku—

  Right then she was crouched down in the night-swathed garden. Laucaigne and the other priests had completely forgotten about her.

  She was motionless as a statue. With both hands covering her face, she braced herself to listen to the poignant hymn echoing quietly from the dark ocean in the distance.

  Seikichi was one of the men singing that hymn.

  There was no doubt about it. She had asked one of the women who had come running to the temple, “Was Seikichi with them?”

  “Seikichi? Yes, he was there. You mean Seikichi from Nakano, right?” The response came down on Kiku’s head like a giant tree crashing on top of her.

  Everything had been smashed. The dreams Kiku had woven up until yesterday all tumbled like a falling tower, kicking up a cloud of dust.

  Even her cousin Ichijirō had decided it would be all right for her to marry Seikichi. With his support, eventually her father and mother and Granny would have a change of heart as well.

  Each morning when she awoke, and each night in her bed, Kiku had savored this fantasy just as an infant nurses for a seemingly endless time at its mother’s breast. Her dream of happiness had known no bounds. In her fantasies, Kiku had imagined herself nestled against Seikichi as they walked through a meadow of lotus flowers. She had even pictured them working side by side in the fields.

  And now it was all gone. Everything had been obliterated. At that very moment, Seikichi was being held prisoner on a ship in the inlet just below her eyes, being taken to some unknown place.

  Seikichi. Hurry and talk to the officers. Tell them you’ll abandon your Kirishitan beliefs. When you do, the officers will immediately let you off the boat and return you to the shore. Hurry and talk to them! Quickly! Quickly!

  Kiku kept screaming inwardly. She couldn’t bear hearing the singing of that hymn any longer. So long as the singing remained audible, Seikichi would feel pressured by the others and would not abandon his Kirishitan faith. She stuffed he
r fingers in her ears and tried to blot out the voices.

  This is all because of that evil woman. That woman!

  Once again the face of that woman danced before her eyes. That alien woman called Santa Maria. That woman had ensnared Seikichi with some mysterious power and would not let him go. She had muddled his mind and led him down an evil path.

  You’d better remember this! If you don’t bring Seikichi back to me as soon as tomorrow, I’ll get even with you! She directed the words toward that woman. I’m not surrendering to the likes of you!

  She stood up and raced toward the chapel. An urge to smash the statue to pieces had swept over her.

  Candles flickered at the altar in the chapel. Father Laucaigne and the other priests had just knelt and commenced their prayers.

  Dawn broke. Kiku awoke to the chilly air and realized she was huddled in a corner of the chapel, sleeping like a puppy.

  No one else was in the chapel. Evidently Laucaigne and the other priests had withdrawn without noticing Kiku.

  Kiku suddenly came to herself. What had become of the ship that Seikichi had boarded? In the stillness of dawn, she could no longer hear the singing voices.

  She ran outside in a daze.

  The waters of the harbor were calm again today, and the surrounding hills were wrapped in a milky morning mist. But there was no sign of the ship.

  Tears streamed from her eyes like water gushing from a well. She wept loudly. Why does Seikichi have to experience so much pain? What evil has he ever done?

  She wanted to scream the words through the streets of Nagasaki from her spot on the hilltop. She wanted to shout them to the people who were still sound asleep in the spring dawn. She wanted to shout them to the ocean and to the sky.

  Awakened by her wailing and sobbing, the priests rushed out of their house. Laucaigne held her in his arms and did his best to console her.

  Throughout that day, the fathers demanded through the French consulate that the Japanese government provide them information on where the 113 Urakami believers had been sent, but their demands were rejected. Governor Sawa had adopted a rigid attitude toward foreign petitions.

  “It’s frightening. I hear that the Kuros were taken to the open sea and tossed into the ocean!”

  “I heard that they’d been sent to Sado to work in the gold mines.”

  Such rumors began to pop up one after another in the streets of Nagasaki that very day.

  Kiku stayed in her bed throughout the day like an invalid. The priests could read in her hollow eyes and unfocused gaze how much she really loved Seikichi.

  She refused any food, leading Okane to snap disagreeably, “You seem pretty comfortable for somebody dying of love,” but Kiku just stared blankly into space, as though she did not hear.

  Seikichi often appeared in her dreams.

  Seikichi would be walking along, his hands bound behind him, with a policeman shouting at him. Kiku would rail at the policeman in hopes of rescuing Seikichi.

  She also saw scenes of Magome, the lotus flower in bloom. Kiku would be playing with Mitsu and some other friends, making garlands of flowers.

  “If you want to see flowers, they’re in full bloom in Nakano!” she would tell the others, but none had been willing to follow her to Nakano.

  “Kiku, what’s wrong?” She was roused from her dreams by a familiar voice calling to her through the sliding screen. In the hallway stood Petitjean, who had been absent from Japan for some time. Kiku did not recognize the young foreign man standing to his side.

  This young Frenchman, Father De Rotz,4 was later to be venerated by the Japanese as the saint of the Sotome region.

  1. Prince Arisugawa Takahito (1835–1895), a member of the Imperial Household, was a close adviser to the emperor, a general in the Imperial Army, and lord president of the Council of State. Ōkubo Toshimichi (1830–1878), like his comrade Kido Takayoshi, was instrumental in founding the new Meiji government; traveled with the Iwakura Mission (1871–1873); and served as Home Minister and, later, Minister of Finance. Because he led the troops against the insurrection of his old friend Saigō Takamori in 1877, Ōkubo was assassinated by loyalists, who regarded him as a traitor. Kuroda Nagatomo (1839–1902) was the last daimyo of the Fukuoka domain and its first governor after the changes in political structure following the Meiji Restoration.

  2. Hagi, in present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture, lies on the Sea of Japan. Tsuwano is located in what is now Shimane Prefecture, also near the Sea of Japan. Fukuyama is today a part of Hiroshima Prefecture.

  3. Koku is a measure for rice, the rough equivalent of what one adult could eat in one year, and was the standard measure of a daimyo’s wealth and prestige.

  4. Marc Marie De Rotz (1840–1914), born in Normandy to an aristocratic family, was brought to Japan by Father Petitjean in 1868. He became parish priest in Shitsu (located in the Sotome region outside Nagasaki) in 1879. He freely parted with his own considerable wealth in order to assist the Christian peasants, built churches for them, established a printing operation, constructed roads and dikes, taught techniques of sewing and dyeing and set up a production factory, built a medical clinic and pharmacy, established a Latin seminary school, and fostered the training of Japanese nuns. He is buried in Shitsu, and a memorial museum was established to celebrate his contributions.

  THE CROWD

  “THAT MITSU IS a real worker! She gives you an honest day’s labor,” the Mistress of the Gotōya often flattered Mitsu.

  The praise thrilled the shy girl. At the same time, though, she wished the Mistress would also say something kind about Tome, who worked alongside her. And she wished that the Mistress would stop making the occasional derogatory comment about Kiku.

  “Compared with you, that Kiku was a real handful. I hear she’s serving now at the Nambanji … but I’m sure I don’t know just what sort of service she’s rendering.”

  The Mistress, who loathed Kirishitans, and Oyone both disparaged the Urakami Kirishitans for their defiance of orders from the magistrate’s office and for adamantly refusing to alter their beliefs.

  Consequently, it appeared that the Mistress was annoyed at the very thought that Kiku was working at the Nambanji.

  It was painful for Mitsu to hear the Mistress grousing about Kiku. Being reserved and timid, she said nothing, but her face bespoke her sadness.

  Mitsu was in fact a very hard worker. She accepted the weight of responsibility for Kiku’s desertion and tried to work twice as hard herself. She pushed herself to the point that Oyone and even Tome cautioned her, “If you don’t slow down a little, you’ll ruin your health.”

  On a brisk day in the fifth month, the Suwa Festival gets under way, and the rhythmic sounds of flute ensembles echo through the streets of the town. Carp streamers stir in the greenery-laden wind, and men who stroll about selling cakes wrapped in bamboo or oak leaves take breaks in the shade of the earthen walls in Teramachi. Once the dragon boat races conclude, the rains finally begin. It is the start of the rainy season.

  One evening when a rain that felt like a precursor to the rainy season quietly soaked the roofs of the houses and the roads, Mitsu went on an errand for Oyone and was on her way back to the shop when she noticed a beggarly looking man in a state of complete exhaustion huddled beside the rear door of the shop.

  Frightened, Mitsu stood back and watched him from a distance. The man lifted his pale face toward her and said feebly, “Miss, could you let me rest here for a while? I won’t stay long.”

  Mitsu detected an Urakami accent in his speech and asked, “Are you from Urakami?”

  “No!” He shook his head energetically. “No!” And then he asked, “I’m sorry, but … could you give me a cup of water? I haven’t put anything in my mouth since morning.”

  By nature, Mitsu could not bear to see miserable or pitiful people. Gazing now at the weary face of this man begging for water from the well and licking his lips as though from hunger, Mitsu felt great compassion toward him and replied, “Of co
urse.”

  She hurried into the kitchen through the rear door. It was drizzling outside, and the kitchen was darker than usual. Oyone and Tome were nowhere to be seen.

  Quickly she took some rice from the bottom of the kettle and made two rice balls and ran back outside with them.

  “I think this might be better than water.”

  The man stared at her in astonishment. A tear-like sparkle glistened in his eyes.

  “You’re very kind, miss.” He greedily stuffed a rice ball into his mouth.

  As she watched him eat, Mitsu said, “I’ll give you something to eat tomorrow, too, so come here in the afternoon.”

  Early afternoon was the least busy time at the shop. And since lunch would be finished, there would likely be some food left over after the Master and the clerks had finished eating.

  The following day, in response to her invitation, the man appeared at the rear entrance. And Mitsu, as she had promised, slipped him a rice ball and some pickled vegetables.

  “Miss?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please give me some job I can help with. Getting this food for nothing, acting like a beggar … it just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Some job …? I’m afraid I’m just an employee here myself.”

  “I’ll do anything—chopping firewood or weeding. Could you ask your boss? All I’d need in return … is something to eat.”

  Mitsu felt a little uncomfortable, but the man was pleading and nearly in tears, so she went directly to the Mistress to convey his request.

  “If we brought a man we know nothing about into the shop, we could end up with something stolen and him running away.” At first the Mistress flat-out refused, but Mitsu kept repeating, “But he’s such a good-hearted person,” so the Mistress finally went out the rear door to have a look at him.

  Ultimately, he was hired on the condition that his only compensation would be food. His name was Kumazō.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Ma’am, I’m from over by Sotome.” But beyond that, he was for some reason noncommittal.

  Chores were heaped on Kumazō, but he worked hard and didn’t utter a word of complaint. Of course, if he were booted out of here, he would have to go back to begging again, so he could hardly grumble no matter what chores he was assigned.