The Bamboo Sword

by Margi Preus

  And then he found himself standing outside the man’s room. “Excuse my intrusion, um . . .” Yoshi wasn’t sure how to address an outsider. “. . . sir,” he whispered at the door. He would just warn him, that’s all. Just tell him that there were those who wished him harm. This is what he intended. But the door slid open, and the man stood there, a black silhouette framed from behind by lantern light. The light spilled out the door, rolling out of the room and up to Yoshi’s feet like a glowing path.

  Even though Yoshi knew it was just a room in an inn, a room like any other, something made it seem as if past that open door he could see all the way to Edo, and even beyond that, maybe to worlds beyond Japan.

  18

  A FROG JUMPS IN

  An angry rumbling came from the front of the inn. The rattling of the gate rattled Yoshi’s very bones. “It’s them!” Yoshi told the man named Manjiro.

  “It’s the men from the bath, the ones who said they want to speak with you.” He bit his lip. “You stay here,” he said. “I’ll go.”

  He marched out as bravely as he could but quailed when he saw the men assembled at the front gate of the inn: Rumbly Voice, with hands on hips; Wheezy One, with arms crossed over an ample stomach; another, with thumbs hitched in his sash; and yet another, with hands tucked into his sleeves. The red-faced one, whom Yoshi kept his eye on, rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “Well, little ragamuffin,” Hand-on-Hilt said. “We went to the teahouse, but you did not appear.”

  “I had to take the little boy home to his father,” Yoshi said. “Then I came straight here. But the Tosa man is not—” He was about to say “here,” when Manjiro walked out of the inn, smiled at the group, and bowed politely.

  Yoshi stiffened. He glanced around for something with which to defend the two of them, and seeing nothing, eyed the swords of the bushi gathered there. Five bushi; five katanas. Even in his wildest fantasies, Yoshi had never taken on that many opponents. And he didn’t have a sword, of course. Not even a bamboo one. Neither did the Tosa man.

  “Honorable gentlemen,” Manjiro said. “What an honor that you grace me with your presence!”

  Yoshi glanced nervously at him, then at the group of men. Fresh from the hot spring, their cheeks rosy, their hair damp, they had the appearance of well-scrubbed schoolboys.

  “How kind of you to arrive just now when I was puzzling over the meaning of a haiku by Basho,” Manjiro said. “Perhaps you know it? It goes like this: ‘The ancient pond / A frog jumps in / The sound of the water.’” He smiled.

  There was a moment of silence. Shuffling of feet. Then Rumbly Voice cleared his throat and growled, “The ancient pond represents the eternal.”

  “Yes, that is how I understand it,” agreed Wheezy One. “The timeless, motionless component of water.”

  “And the frog?” Manjiro asked.

  “I believe the frog represents the temporary, the momentary element,” said Hand-on-Hilt.

  “And the sound of the water,” said Wheezy One, “is that moment when the temporary element intersects with the eternal.”

  “Splash!” exclaimed Rumbly Voice, clapping his hands for emphasis.

  “What happens as soon as the frog is underwater?” Manjiro asked.

  “The pond becomes still once again?” Yoshi offered.

  “Is the pond the same as it was?”

  There was silence as they all pondered this question.

  “No!” Yoshi exclaimed. “Because now there is a frog in it!”

  “Ah,” said Manjiro.“But is that a bad thing? Or a good thing?”

  There was some argument among the men as to whether the introduction of the frog to the pond was a good or a bad thing. Yoshi thought it was a good thing, for, after all, what is a pond without a frog?

  Manjiro thanked the men for helping him puzzle out the deeper significance of the haiku and invited them into the front garden, saying, “No doubt you came to hear of that faraway land of America.” Without waiting for a reply, he began to tell them fantastic things. How there was something called a railroad that moved so fast that the countryside became just a blur, and about how gold had been discovered in a place called California and ordinary people had become as rich as the great lords who traveled the Tokaido. “Some are so rich they ride in carriages with silver wheels!” he said.

  After the men finally drifted away to their inns or homes, Manjiro said to Yoshi, “You are a brave fellow, to face those men alone. Fortunately, their bark was worse than their bite.”

  Their bark worse than their bite? That must be a barbarian saying, Yoshi thought.

  “But now you must run home to your parents before they become worried about you,” Manjiro finished.

  “I regret to admit I have neither home nor parents,” Yoshi said.

  “I am sorry to hear that,” Manjiro said. He turned his gaze on the garden, its bare stalks lit by the blue moonlight. His thoughts seemed to be far away. Then he turned back to Yoshi, smiled, and said, “I hope that someday your heart will find a home.”

  Home, Yoshi thought. The word tasted as sweet as a plum when you said it, but what did it really mean?

  19

  YOSHI THE BODYGUARD

  It was the season of the Seven Grasses of Autumn. In the low-lying lands, fields of rice were ready for harvest. In the higher lands, winter wheat had been sown. And higher yet on the hills, the trees were frosted with white.

  Yoshi took in a great lungful of air and let it out in a poof of white smoke. Steam, he thought. Somehow it could power ships. This was something he would like to understand.

  His heart swelled a little to think that he was no longer Yoshi the Nobody. He was now a bodyguard for a bushi. After the men from the bath had left, and after Manjiro had asked Yoshi about his home and family, Manjiro had said, “Perhaps, if you are alone, you would like to take a job as my bodyguard.”

  Yoshi laughed out loud. “Now you are making fun of me.”

  “Not at all,” Manjiro said. “I believe you have already earned yourself that position. You have just done me a great service by warning me of danger. By contrast, think of those two who travel with me. They have slept through the whole thing!” He laughed.

  Yoshi couldn’t help smiling. “But I am just a boy and a peasant!” he said. “One must be a samurai to be a bodyguard. Even if I were big enough to defend you, what would I use as a weapon? I have no swords.”

  “Let us just say you are an apprentice bodyguard, then,” Manjiro said.

  “Your retainers won’t like it,” Yoshi said, keeping his voice low.

  “Oh, we shan’t tell them,” Manjiro said. “There’s no need for them to know what your job is. Once we get to Edo, we’ll get you an even better position. Let’s see. You seem to like horses. Maybe a job at the shogun’s stables?”

  The shogun’s stables! Yoshi thought. Something he never would have imagined.

  Yet now, after saying good-bye to Jiro and Chibi, he was on his way to Edo—as a bodyguard! Never mind that it was a secret. Never mind that he was only a scrawny thirteen-year-old peasant. A scrawny peasant without a weapon. Never mind that nobody else knew—or ever would know—of his position. It still made him feel as if he carried a little treasure—a little secret treasure. He walked a little taller, felt a little stronger. Maybe there was even a bit of a swagger in his step.

  “Have you been to Edo?” Manjiro asked Yoshi.

  “Oh, sure,” Yoshi said, trying to sound casual, as if he’d been there many times.

  “Excellent!” Manjiro said. “I have never been, and you can show me the sights and help me find my way around.”

  Yoshi nodded, although not very confidently. Of course he didn’t know his way around Edo! All he knew was what he had learned from Ozawa’s map. Why had he said such a stupid thing? He had not expected that Manjiro, who was about to become an adviser to the shogun, would want to be shown around Edo by a mere boy like him!

  But in the days on the Tokaido that fol
lowed, Manjiro often walked alongside Yoshi, saying he preferred walking to jouncing along in a kago. “It’s not quite like a ride in a carriage, is it?” he said. To this, Yoshi had no answer, because he had no idea what a carriage was.

  Manjiro seemed to enjoy telling Yoshi stories of that distant land, America. When they passed by merchants selling rice cakes and simmered burdock root, Manjiro said that in America they ate something called “bread” and drank a thing called “coffee.”

  “But boys your age are expected to drink milk,” Manjiro said.

  “Miruku,” Yoshi repeated. “What is it?”

  “You wouldn’t like it,” Manjiro said.

  Yoshi did not doubt that.

  After Yoshi and Manjiro had bowed to several high-ranking officials who passed by, Manjiro said, “Americans do not bow to each other as we do. Instead, they shake hands. When a guest enters the home of an American, he takes off his hat. They sit on chairs instead of on the floor.”

  It was odd, Yoshi thought, that his new master wanted to spend time with a peasant boy instead of his samurai retainers, closer to him in age and status. But there were many odd things about the man . . . something a little off, something not entirely Japanese. It was hard to put his finger on it exactly. Maybe he was a bit too bold, too forward. He didn’t come toward people with a readiness to bow—he looked them in the face and seemed always ready to thrust out his hand in that strange way the barbarians greeted each other—clasping each other’s hand and pumping their arms up and down. It was a graceless gesture, entirely barbaric.

  Oddest of all, Manjiro didn’t wear his swords. This made Yoshi nervous. He worried for the man’s safety, especially because of things he had noticed.

  First it was just a glimpse of a fluttering sleeve, and the shape of a person slipping in among a group of white-clad pilgrims. Yoshi noticed the suddenly cast-down eyes of a man supposedly reading a broadsheet, and a door sliding open a crack as they approached, then sliding shut as they passed by.

  Yoshi was sure they were being watched. Perhaps they were being followed. He remembered the words of the men in the bath: “The shogun’s spies are everywhere.” Is that who was following them? Or was it someone who wished them harm? And if it was, how was Yoshi going to defend his master?

  “Honorable employer,” Yoshi said when he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer, “as your, um, bodyguard, or . . . er . . . apprentice bodyguard, I have to humbly request that you wear at least one of your swords.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “There are several reasons, the main one being that you might protect yourself with it.”

  “That’s hardly likely,” Manjiro said. “I have no idea how to use it!”

  “Well, you don’t want to be mistaken for a commoner, do you?”

  Manjiro shrugged. It was an American gesture that Yoshi had come to understand meant “I don’t know” or “I don’t care either way.” Yoshi wasn’t sure which shrug this one was.

  “You could be cut down by mistake!” Yoshi cried. “If a bushi were not to know who you were. Or he could use the excuse of not realizing who you were to cut you down.”

  “The sword is not the solution to everything,” Manjiro said. “Have you not heard of the spirit of winning without the sword?”

  “Yes,” Yoshi said, “but . . .”

  “I want to be known as a man of peace,” Manjiro went on. “How do I express that if I am wearing a sword?”

  “I didn’t want to say,” Yoshi said, “but we are being watched. Perhaps followed.”

  “People are curious,” Manjiro said. “They just want to take a look. And, as we know,” he added cheerily, “the shogun’s spies are everywhere.”

  Well, as odd as the man might seem, it was not Yoshi’s place to argue with him. If it were Yoshi who had the right to wear a sword, well . . . ! He would wear it proudly. He would use his swords to fight with honor!

  Part of the procession of a great lord. (Utagawa Hiroshige III)

  “And, anyway,” Manjiro said, “why do I need a sword if I am protected by such a resourceful bodyguard as you?”

  “B-b-but,” Yoshi stammered, “I can’t carry swords, either! How am I to protect you?”

  “I have faith in you, my friend,” Manjiro said. “If it becomes necessary, you will find a way.”

  “Be down!” came the shout of a great lord’s forerunners, and Yoshi watched the wave of commoners—food and charcoal vendors, jugglers, beggars, storytellers, and peddlers—drop to their knees as troops and officers appeared.

  “This reminds me of a cattle drive,” Manjiro said. “I saw one when I was in California. I learned to use a lasso from an old cowboy there. Here, I’ll show you.” He retrieved a length of rope from his belongings. He made a loop in it with a kind of knot that could slide up or down the length of the rope, which made the loop larger or smaller. “You never know when a lasso might come in handy,” he said.

  Yoshi kept one nervous eye on Manjiro, who was making slow circles over his head with the rope, and the other eye on the procession, where horses were parading by loaded with the great lord’s baggage. Yoshi should be on his knees by now.

  “How about if I try to rope one of those horses?” Manjiro asked.

  Yoshi looked at him with horror, and Manjiro did an odd thing with one of his eyes. He closed it, then opened it—very quickly—while looking straight at Yoshi. Then he said, “What do you make of all this?”

  “What do I make of what?” Yoshi asked.

  “The parade.” Manjiro nodded at the porters weighed down with lacquered chests, trunks, and baskets.

  “Be down!” the bannermen roared.

  Finally Manjiro bowed and Yoshi dropped to his knees, with his head inches from the ground. He could no longer see anything but the dirt, but he could hear the thud of feet, the clopping of hooves, the grunts and heavy breathing of the porters and then the palanquin bearers who would be carrying the great lord himself.

  After the lord would come his hat bearer and his umbrella bearer. More trunks. Pages. More horses, more baggage, still more horses with their grooms and footmen, the lord’s household servants, and other lower officers of his court. All the while, Yoshi stared at the dirt.

  After the last of the entourage had passed by and Yoshi had risen and dusted himself off, Manjiro said, “Quite a show, isn’t it?”

  Yoshi glanced at him. The man’s mouth was pressed into a puckered disguise of a smile. He seemed to find all this rather amusing.

  “And for what?” Manjiro asked. “That is something you start to wonder after a while: What is its purpose?”

  “Purpose?” Yoshi didn’t understand.

  “This lasso has a useful purpose,” Manjiro said, holding up the rope. Then he gestured to the procession that was disappearing around a bend and said, “But what was the purpose of all that?”

  Yoshi had no answer, nor did he even really understand the question.

  20

  IN THE SHOGUN’S CASTLE

  The Month of Frost, 6th Year of Kaei

  (November 1853)

  Yoshi never, ever would have imagined that he—he! Yoshi the Nobody!—would be seeing the inside of the shogun’s castle! Except that he wasn’t seeing anything, because he didn’t dare lift his head for an instant.

  Moving through the castle’s quiet corridors, all Yoshi saw were his feet. And Manjiro’s feet. And the smooth stones, polished wooden boards, or thick tatami mats of the floor beneath his feet. And occasionally someone else’s feet whispering past.

  He did not see the scenes by famous artists hanging in the alcoves of the rooms. He didn’t see the elegant flower arrangements, or the vast gardens, or the rich brocade or embroidered silk kimonos of those who passed by.

  Nor did he hear much. It seemed that in the shogun’s castle all that could be heard were whispers: the soft whisper of paper doors sliding open or shut. The whispers of silken garments and stockinged feet in the passageways. The whispers of voices. Urgent whis
pers.

  Not until Yoshi was seated outside the reception room, where Manjiro was meeting with Magistrate Kawaji and other high-level officials of the Bakufu, was he really able to listen. And thanks to the paper walls, he could hear some of what was being discussed.

  Manjiro began telling councillors that America was a very powerful nation made up of thirty-one states. He went on to describe its national resources: gold, silver, copper, iron, timber, and so on. As for agriculture, he said that the country grew abundant wheat, barley, corn, beans, and vegetables—but not rice, because they did not eat it there.

  “It has been a long-cherished desire on the part of America to establish friendly relations with Japan,” Manjiro said. “If a whaleship is delayed by a storm, Americans seek permission to get water and food here. In spite of their humble requests, if an American vessel is shipwrecked in Japanese waters, the survivors are treated harshly, as if they were beasts, by the Japanese authorities.”

  “Not so!” one of the councillors protested.

  Yoshi heard the rustle of paper—a scroll being unrolled, he imagined.

  “We received this at the arrival of the Black Ships,” a councillor was saying. “These drawings show the guns and weapons of the Americans.”

  Yoshi remembered Ozawa saying that the Bakufu was interested in pictures of the barbarian ships. He wondered if they were looking at Ozawa’s drawings!

  “More and more fighting ships and merchant ships driven by steam engines are being built in America,” Manjiro explained. “These ships can be navigated in all directions, regardless of the wind or the current.” He went on to tell about the firepower found on an American man-of-war: cannon and carronades, howitzers, muskets, pistols, and sabers. He finished by saying, “There are hardly any weapons that would frighten the Americans out of their wits.”