The Pure Land

by Spence, Alan

  ‘It’s the British ultimatum,’ said Satow, ‘translated into Japanese for the Daimyo.’ He nodded to Glover. ‘I’m afraid this all feels horribly familiar.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Glover. ‘It’s Kagoshima, again.’

  They boarded the warship, HMS Cormorant. It would be accompanied by another, HMS Barrosa, in a show of strength designed to give the Choshu a foretaste of what was to come should they decide to continue being obdurate.

  In charge of the Cormorant was Captain Barstow, the Master of the Lodge, who had once waylaid Glover and Ito returning from Shanghai with a cache of weapons. It seemed so long ago, so much had happened since.

  ‘Mister Glover,’ said the Captain. ‘I see you are still defending British interests.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Glover. ‘Perhaps more than you know.’

  ‘If I recall,’ said the Captain, ‘when we last met you had the foresight to warn me of the potential danger posed by these clans, particularly the Choshu.’

  ‘If I mind right,’ said Glover, ‘I also told you there were honourable exceptions.’

  ‘Mister Ito,’ said the Captain, recognising him, nodding in his direction.

  Ito stared back at him, cold and hard, said nothing.

  For the whole of the journey the three Japanese sat on deck, straightbacked, staring ahead. When the ship dropped anchor at Kasato, they stood up, bowed formally to each other then took their leave of Glover, each in turn bowing to him.

  ‘Good luck,’ he said.

  ‘Need more than luck,’ said Ito, and he smiled a tight, grim smile.

  Before they disembarked onto the rowboat that would ferry them ashore, Matsuo stood in front of Glover, bowed once more with deep humility, bending almost double. Then he held out his hand, something he had never done before, shook Glover’s hand, his grip quick and firm, said, ‘Arigato gozaimasu. Thank you, Guraba-san.’

  As they watched the boat head towards the island, Glover said, ‘God help them.’

  Satow, at his shoulder, said, ‘Let us hope He does.’

  ‘What do you think are their chances?’

  ‘I’d say their chances of having their heads removed are perhaps seven out of ten.’

  ‘Christ!’ said Glover.

  ‘You might be better invoking their God,’ said Satow, ‘their Buddha.’

  Glover remembered that huge bronze statue at Kamakura, its presence, its benign detachment. And from somewhere the words came to him. Namu Amida Butsu. He’d heard them chanted, at his son’s funeral, at the shrine where he’d hidden with Mackenzie, at the temple in Kagoshima; they came to him unbidden, and he said them in silence, to himself.

  *

  The arrangement was that they would wait, at anchor, for the whole of that day. If necessary, the three men would stay overnight, continue their negotiations the next morning, return to the ship by noon.

  Glover was unable to sleep, paced the deck through the dogwatch hours, looked out across the dark stretch of water to the shore. Even peering through his spyglass he could see nothing, the odd flicker of light. Imperceptibly the sky began to lighten, the island took shape. At four bells, Satow joined him on deck.

  ‘No sign?’

  ‘Not a thing,’ said Glover.

  ‘I would imagine,’ said Satow, ‘the longer it continues, the greater the hope.’

  Towards noon there was activity on the bridge. The launch had been sighted, returning from shore. It pulled alongside, bobbing in the swell, and Ito and Inoue swung onto the rope ladder, clambered aboard. Ito’s face was grim. ‘No good. Takashi too powerful. They don’t listen.’

  Glover had expected this. But at least Ito and Inoue were alive, safe. Then he realised something was amiss; he looked down at the launch, saw only the two crewmen.

  ‘Where’s Matsuo?’ he asked.

  Ito let out a long slow breath. ‘He stay. Is long story.’ He had two swords tucked in his waistband. He took out one of them, the shorter wakizashi, handed it reverently to Glover. ‘He give me this for you. He want you to have it.’

  Glover took the sword, bowed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He keep other sword. Tomorrow commit seppuku.’

  ‘In God’s name why?’

  This time Ito’s sigh was pained. ‘I tell you, is long story. Very … complicated.’

  The gist of it was they had talked to a standstill. The clan leader’s mind was already set; Takashi had seen to that. But they’d tried, they’d talked through the night, going over and over the same ground.

  The British demand had been for an immediate cessation of firing on foreign ships, the dismantling of the gun placements, the payment of recompense for damage already done. In elaborate and evasive language, the Choshu had refused on every point, citing the need to defend their territory with reference to ‘invaders’.

  Glover listened, heart sinking, a taste like metal in his mouth.

  ‘And Matsuo, what happened to him?’

  Ito tried to find the language. ‘I told you when I was young man, I was member of sonno-joi. We wanted to fight the West, throw out all invaders.’

  ‘You did,’ said Glover, glancing at Captain Barstow, who had flinched when Ito spoke.

  ‘I was also part of that group,’ said Inoue. ‘So was Takashi.’

  ‘And so was Matsuo,’ said Ito. ‘Takashi get whole group to take oath, always to defend clan, drive out barbarian. Even sign in own blood. Matsuo do this.’

  ‘And you?’ said the Captain.

  ‘I was in Edo,’ said Ito, ‘doing business. So was Inoue-san. We don’t sign.’

  ‘Very convenient,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Perhaps Ito and Inoue were already seeing things more clearly,’ said Glover, rounding on him.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said the Captain.

  Ito ignored him, continued. ‘Last night Takashi say to Matsuo he is traitor, he break his oath. He sign in blood so he have to take own life.’

  ‘And he listened?’ said Glover.

  Ito nodded. ‘What make it worse, Matsuo’s father there. He tell Matsuo he is dishonour to family and clan.’

  ‘God Almighty!’ said Glover.

  ‘Now Matsuo prepare himself for seppuku.’

  ‘No!’ said Glover. ‘It’s madness! We can’t let him do it!’

  ‘Is very sad,’ said Ito. ‘But is noble death. He will die well.’

  Glover held the sword in his hands, looked towards the island. There was nothing to be done.

  ‘So,’ said the Captain. ‘We have our full complement? We can return to Yokohama?’

  ‘Hai,’ said Ito. ‘We go.’

  On the way back to Yokohama, Ito delivered a rant against the Shogun. ‘He limit trade with West so he control it. He sit in his palace, get rich and fat, and nobody else get share. British should get rid of him, throw him overboard. Should go to Osaka and make treaty with young Emperor, restore him to power. This is what Japanese people want. Bring unity. All clans respect Emperor, come together, make Japan strong. Good for West also.’

  The Captain displayed his usual tired cynicism, dismissed Ito as a self-seeking troublemaker, wouldn’t trust him an inch. Satow, however, was impressed by Ito’s intensity, his clear-minded resolve. As the Cormorant steamed in to Yokohama harbour, he spoke about it to Glover.

  ‘You really think Ito and the others offer hope for the future?’

  ‘I’m convinced of it. They are the future.’

  ‘If he had his way, the Cormorant would steam towards Osaka straight away, carrying a delegation to the Emperor!’

  ‘Unfortunately, it is rather more likely to return to Shimonoseki with the rest of the fleet, to pound the Choshu into submission.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Satow. ‘I fear that the Consul, having amassed such a force, will feel the need to use it.’

  *

  Satow was right. The events were well documented, reported the following week in the Nagasaki Advertiser. The seventeen-strong fleet entered the Straits and fanned out in for
mation. The bombardment of the Choshu batteries was relentless and decisive. Troops came ashore, splashed through paddyfields, drove on up the grassy hill to the fortifications and gun emplacements. After a last skirmish, some hand-to-hand fighting, the Choshu surrendered. The guns were dismantled, carriages smashed, shot and shell thrown into the sea, powder burned. The settlement was put to the torch; the inhabitants fled; the troops buried their dead on the hillside; the fleet weighed anchor and sailed back to Yokohama. The Straits were re-opened to shipping forthwith, and the Choshu were forced to pay an indemnity, partly financing the expedition against them, an irony that would not be lost on the clan and its leadership.

  Glover read the report with the now familiar feeling of dismay. The whole business was such a waste.

  Satow had written to him, telling him that Parkes had received a letter from the Foreign Office, arriving some days after the bombardment. It advised him not to proceed with military action as it was not the policy of Her Majesty’s Government in such circumstances. The Consul had drafted a reply, explaining about the delay in receiving their initial dispatch, and explaining that, regrettably, action had already been taken. But before this could be sent, a further communication came from London, saying that, in the light of further information received, the decision to use force had been the correct one after all.

  Satow also made the point that sending a joint western force, including a French contingent, sent a clear signal to the Shogun and also undermined the possibility of a Japanese–French alliance, which had been brewing and which might prove troublesome.

  Fine.

  Glover re-read Satow’s letter, tore it in half, in half again.

  As long as Her Majesty’s Government was satisfied that everything was proceeding satisfactorily, and their ships could come and go, then everything was as it should be, God was in his heaven, all was right with the world.

  He threw the torn-up scraps of paper across his desk, picked up Matsuo’s sword which he’d placed there with his other mementos. He eased the sword a little from its sheath. The keen blade glinted in the lamplight. He imagined, all too vividly, Matsuo with the other sword, face contorted as he leaned forward onto the blade, drove it into his entrails.

  Waste.

  He would never fully understand this country, these people. But he was committed to the work now, for better or worse, had to throw himself into it with everything he had.

  He nicked the tip of his little finger with the blade, just enough to draw blood, satisfy samurai tradition. A tiny gob of red appeared, a jewel. He licked it, then he put the sword back in its sheath, touched it to his forehead, replaced it on the desk.

  *

  Market forces were constantly at play, demand for commodities shifting, changing. Glover was alert to the vagaries, looking for signs, straws in the wind. As if overnight, by some strange whim of fashion, there was a great demand for tea in America. Glover moved quickly to seize the moment, expand his operation, scale everything up. His firing shed was torn down and replaced by two huge godowns, great high-ceilinged warehouses, effectively tea-processing factories. The tea business was suddenly an industry, employed a workforce of four hundred, men and women.

  It was the start of the season; the raw crop was delivered in bulk from the countryside, had to be fired and dried as quickly as possible, packed in crates ready for dispatch, shipped out directly in clippers loaded to the gunwales with nothing but tea. The work went on, in shifts, day and night, and Glover would turn up at odd hours, himself fired up, exhilarated.

  He stopped by one night with Walsh, on his way to the teahouse.

  ‘Christ, Tom!’ shouted Walsh above the noise of the work. ‘When you do something, you damn well do it!’

  ‘No other way!’ shouted Glover. ‘Otherwise what’s the point?’

  The heat in the place was intense, from hundreds of copper pans filled with red-hot charcoal. Over them the green leaves were dried in huge flat baskets, shaken from side to side, never still; the workers glistened with sweat, the men dressed only in loincloths, the women naked to the waist; flares threw a flickering light, cast shadows upwards, and steam from the leaves hung in the air. The noise too was overwhelming, great wooden crates violently shaken to settle the fired tea that poured into them in a constant unending flow.

  ‘It’s infernal!’ shouted Walsh, loosening his shirt collar.

  ‘Aye!’ shouted Glover. ‘Isn’t it?’

  Walsh looked at him strangely, warily. ‘You look demonic!’

  Glover laughed, recognised what Walsh meant, the mood that was on him. He felt the surge of it, indomitable. His blood was up.

  Later, fired even more by a drink or two, he took exception to something Walsh said, about the workforce slaving away.

  Glover glared at him, cold. ‘Those folk are glad of a job. I pay them well for what they do. And I don’t think an American is in a position to lecture anyone about slavery!’

  Now Walsh was angry. ‘I’ll remind you, sir, that we’re fighting a war to abolish it.’

  ‘And half of your countrymen are fighting a war to keep it!’

  ‘Sometimes you go too far.’

  ‘Impossible!’ said Glover, cuffing him a little too hard to the side of the head, then laughing again, grabbing Maki round the waist. She shrieked and clung to him. He breathed in her scent, intoxicated.

  *

  He exported his tea by the shipload; sold rice to China in contravention of the Shogun’s law banning such trade. Investing his profits, he began to import gold bars from Europe, a hundred bars at a time, sold them to the Japanese Government at a price that undercut the Chinese, ending their monopoly on the supply of gold. He undertook to sell a steamer, The Carthage, for Jardine Mathieson, paid a Dutch engineer who attended the Nagasaki Lodge to oversee and approve repairs to the ship, sold it on to the Bakufu for $120,000. With the commission on that deal, he increased his imports of gold bars to a thousand at a time. He brokered further sales of ships to some of the smaller Japanese clans who could not pay cash but paid in huge quantities of rice, which he sold on to China. And so it continued, the spiral of his business success, onwards and upwards.

  Mackenzie advised a modicum of caution, circumspection. ‘You’re walking a tightrope, Tom.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And I’m juggling and eating fire at the same time!’

  He also knew the most lucrative dealings of all were in arms. But it was no longer good enough to sell to the highest bidder. He was happy to trade with the Shogun, the Bakufu, exploit them and take their money for gold, or merchant ships. But selling them weapons was no longer an option. Their time was over.

  After Shimonoseki, there was a rapid change at the heart of the Choshu. The cursory, dismissive nature of the beating, followed by the humiliation of having to hand over an indemnity, left Takashi and his faction in disgrace. Ito and Inoue were finally heeded, held sway. They enlisted the backing and support of a powerful clan member, Kido Takayoshi, brought him late at night to Ipponmatsu for a preliminary meeting with Glover.

  Initially Kido seemed hostile, ill at ease. He spoke little English, and communicated through Ito and Inoue as interpreters. Like them, he had initially been resistant to dealing with the West. He particularly resented the threat of Christian missionaries, and would still actively seek out Japanese kakure, hidden Christians, seeing them as violators of a centuries-old ban on that most hateful of religions. He argued that the sole purpose of Christianity was to undermine traditional Japanese values, convert and then conquer.

  ‘However …’ said Glover, wondering how they could conceivably find common ground.

  Ito translated the word. ‘Shikashi …’

  Kido was silent, staring hard at Glover. Then he continued, Ito again translating.

  He had not meant to cause offence. He cared only about the future of Japan. He understood Glover was an honourable gaijin, who also cared about Japan, and who was willing to help them in their undertaking. The only way f
orward was to get rid of the Shogun and the other reactionary elements. Only then could Japan open up fully to the West, learn from the West and ultimately equal the West.

  ‘Hai,’ said Glover. ‘So desu.’

  He poured sake into small whisky glasses for all four of them, repeated the toast he had once made in Kagoshima.

  ‘Shogun! Nanka kuso kurae!’

  They drained their glasses. Ito and Inoue grinned. Kido nodded but remained stern.

  Glover opened a bottle of Scotch, refilled their glasses, proposed another toast.

  ‘Japan,’ he said. ‘Nihon.’

  Again they drank, repeated it, their eyes watering from the strength of the spirit.

  ‘Nihon!’

  *

  He drove himself on, recognised no boundaries. His business interests, legitimate and otherwise, turned ever greater profits; more tea, more silk, more opium, more rice, more ships, more guns, more gold. Word spread he would take a chance on almost anything.

  One evening a young man approached him in the Foreigners’ Club.

  ‘Mister Glover?’

  The young man looked wild-eyed, haggard. By his appearance he had not slept much of late.

  ‘Aye?’ said Glover, cautious.

  ‘I want to ask you, sir, if you would like to buy a tiger?’

  Glover had heard aright. It was an odd twist on a familiar story: the young man, Mitchell, had recently arrived from Yokohama, had overreached himself, signing chits that were never honoured, running up debts that couldn’t be paid. On one particularly excessive night of revelry in the pleasure quarter, he had found himself talked into a transaction guaranteed to earn him a profit. He had bought a tiger.

  In spite of himself, Glover was intrigued.

  ‘The gentleman who sold the beast to me,’ said Mitchell, ‘was a Chinaman.’

  ‘By the name of Wang-Li, perhaps?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Glover. ‘Continue.’

  ‘He had acquired the animal in the Malay Straits. He was offering it to me at such a favourable price, he explained, that I could not fail to gain from the transaction. He was sure some travelling circus, making its way in these parts, would be eager to buy it. Mister Li would sell it himself, at a much higher price, if he had not been summoned to return to Shanghai on urgent family business.’