The Bamboo Sword

by Margi Preus

  The coughing one held up a coin—a large coin, a gold koban!

  It would only take a few of those before he’d have enough money to pay Ozawa back!

  “Since you have access to the foreign spy,” the leader went on, “we want you to report back to us all that he does and says.”

  Yoshi stared into his nearly empty soup bowl. It was one thing to spy on Manjiro to find out what he did with his restaurant leftovers, but this! This was different kind of spying.

  26

  YOSHI THE SPY

  Yoshi and Manjiro crossed the inner moat and stopped at the first guardhouse on their way to an important meeting with the shogun’s councillors. Rumors had spread that the Black Ships could return at any time, and Manjiro had once again been summoned.

  The guards glanced at Manjiro’s papers, then peered at Yoshi with unusual intensity. At least it seemed that way to him. After many minutes of scrutiny, they were allowed to pass through.

  They crossed another bridge, past more guards, through another gate. At every checkpoint, Yoshi’s stomach clenched, his muscles tightened. You are a servant and you are invisible, he reminded himself. They are not really noticing you. But as he and Manjiro traversed the wide gravel yard, which was swarming with armed warriors and sentries, it seemed to Yoshi that every single one of them was eyeing him with suspicion. Even the golden dragons on the castle’s gabled rooftops appeared to leer down at him. “Spy!” they seemed to hiss, even though Yoshi had not done any spying yet. It felt as if everyone and everything in the castle suspected that he was at least supposed to be a spy. Everyone, that is, except Manjiro.

  Yoshi was accompanying Manjiro as an errand boy or messenger, but it seemed there weren’t any errands or messages, so instead Yoshi knelt quietly outside the reception room, trying to concentrate on the conversation within. Mostly, though, he was brooding. He knew what he was supposed to be doing: listening and reporting all that he heard to the samurai at the soba shop. Although he had not reported anything so far, he still felt guilty. Guilty and confused.

  What was he going to do? If he told the samurai what Manjiro did and said, wouldn’t that be betraying his master? And didn’t Yoshi owe his loyalty to him? On the other hand, how could it possibly matter if he told them some of the things that Manjiro had told the councillors: that the River of Heaven could be seen in other parts of the world, but in America it was called the Milky Way? Or that thunderstorms occurred in many parts of the world, not just in Japan. Yoshi supposed there’d be no harm in telling the soba shop samurai that.

  What if he didn’t say anything about Manjiro but just reported what the councillors had to say? He could tell them what Lord Ii was saying right now: that without warships, he felt uneasy about pursuing and attacking the Americans.

  He could tell them that the Lord of Mito said the Americans had been watching the country with greedy eyes for years. He said, “They will manage bit by bit to impoverish the country, after which they will treat us just as they like.”

  It didn’t seem as if it would hurt anything to say these things, and then Yoshi could earn the promised coins and be that much closer to repaying Ozawa.

  Now Manjiro was insisting that the Americans’ intentions were honorable: “It is telling that the motto of the Americans, the phrase they stamp on their currency, is ‘E pluribus unum.’ It is a Latin phrase that means ‘Out of many, one.’”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” one of the councillors asked, echoing Yoshi’s own thought.

  “It might mean many things,” Manjiro replied. “Some think that it means ‘Out of many states, one nation.’ Or, because the United States is a country of immigrants, ‘Out of many nationalities, one people.’ Or—”

  Yoshi’s concentration was broken when he noticed the girl, Kiku, out in the garden. How had she appeared there? He rose and walked over to her. She didn’t look at him; instead, she stopped and gazed out, seeming to focus on something far beyond the garden.

  “You see?” Kiku said when he reached her. “Even the shogun has to borrow things.” She gestured through the opening in the carefully sculpted pines to the view of wooded hills and, beyond them, the distant, misty peak of Fuji-san. “Shakkei, it’s called—borrowed scenery. Bringing a faraway view into this very garden, as if part of it.”

  Yoshi’s eyes traveled past the newly budding branches to the distant scene. Beyond the shogun’s garden was where everything was happening: Young samurai met in teahouses discussing how the government might be transformed, and foreign ships would soon gather in the bay outside these walls. All the while, a million people held their breath, waiting to see what might happen.

  These stone walls and thick hedges could not keep out the world, Yoshi thought. His heart pressed almost painfully against his chest to think of it, but he wasn’t sure it was from fear.

  Kiku turned to face him and asked, “Have you ever wondered where you belong?”

  “No,” he answered. It was not his place to wonder such things. But now he couldn’t help wondering . . . Where did he belong? “Where do you think you belong?” he asked. He was surprised how directly they were speaking with each other.

  “I don’t know . . .” She pointed through the opening in the trees at the faraway view. “Maybe there.”

  Yoshi remembered his desire to see what lay beyond the dark hills on the far side of the bay. He wanted to tell her about his longing to see more of the world, but he didn’t know how to talk about it.

  Later, sitting in the soba shop, hunched over a bowl of broth, he thought of his conversation with Kiku about belonging. He did not belong here, in this place, with these samurai. He had wanted to belong, had wished that he could be one of them, but he wasn’t. And he never would be.

  Nonetheless, here is where he was, and the young samurai were peppering him with questions. He was determined not to give them any information about Manjiro, but when they asked what he’d said, he wasn’t prepared, and he blurted out, “E pluribus unum.”

  “What?” said the bear-like one, who was named Kuma. “Now you are speaking gibberish.”

  The serious one laughed. “It’s Latin,” he said. “It’s a motto of the Americans. I heard about it from Kawada Shoryo, who wrote the book about the castaway. It means”—he paused for a moment, thinking—“‘Out of many, one.’”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “In America they have many states.”

  “Thirty-one,” Yoshi mumbled around his soup.

  “Many states, one nation. I suppose it would be as if our domain lords all worked together to make one unified nation, instead of ruling their domains as if they were kingdoms.”

  Catfish raised an eyebrow. “I would like to see that happen.”

  “It can mean other things, too,” Yoshi said.

  The others turned to him. “For instance?”

  “America is a nation of immigrants. It could mean Out of many nationalities, one people.’”

  “They may be all different nationalities, but they are all still barbarians,” Coughing One grumbled.

  “Or maybe . . . ” Yoshi stopped for a moment. Something odd had suddenly occurred to him. “I suppose it could mean that out of the many nationalities on earth, we are all still one people.”

  Kuma snorted. “A little radical in our midst!” he said, and the others laughed.

  But the loose-haired one looked at Yoshi thoughtfully. “Is this what your master tells you?” he asked. “That all people are the same?”

  Yoshi shoveled more soup into his mouth and stared at the bowl. He was determined not to say anything else about Manjiro, or what he had or hadn’t told him.

  “That is the founding principle of the United States,” the serious one said. “That all men are created equal.”

  Yoshi expected to hear the rumble of disagreement, but the room was strangely silent. Perhaps, he thought, they were considering the fact that here in their own country, they were all low-level samurai wit
h little power or say in anything. They had not been born to wealth or power, and so it was unlikely they would ever have either. That is how it was.

  Two new young samurai had joined the group, and now one of them spoke. “The thing to do is to go there,” he said.

  “Go where?” Coughing One asked.

  “To America.”

  The room grew still. After a moment, Catfish said, “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Only by learning the barbarians’ ways can we hope to defeat them,” the young man answered. “Someone must do it. Why not us?”

  “How do you propose to get there?”

  “We will approach the Americans, explain that we want to go to their country, and ask to be taken aboard one of the ships.”

  The room filled with murmurs of surprise. “Dangerous!” “Illegal!” “Radical!” the others exclaimed.

  “Yes, of course we know that,” the self-assured young man said.

  Yoshi stared at him open-mouthed.

  “If your plan fails . . .” Kuma’s voice trailed off.

  “We know,” the man’s companion said. “We are prepared for whatever might happen: arrest, interrogation, even execution. We believe this is the best—the only—course we can take.”

  The room was silent, everyone considering their words. The only sound was the sploosh of a noodle sliding from Yoshi’s chopsticks back into the broth.

  One day, Yoshi told the men in the soba shop something he knew they would find out anyway. It wasn’t a secret. But he could deliver the news a little bit early and thus get some credit for his spy work. Perhaps earn the last bit necessary to make a complete repayment to Ozawa.

  “The Black Ships have returned, and there will be a meeting with the barbarians to discuss a treaty,” he said.

  “They were not supposed to come back for a full year!” Catfish snapped.

  Yoshi resisted the urge to shrug—that gesture he’d picked up from Manjiro.

  “It is as we feared,” Kuma growled. “The Bakufu intends to negotiate with the barbarians.”

  “There are those of us who think that perhaps an opportunity will arise to prevent the signing of the treaty,” Catfish said.

  “How do you think you are going to do that?” Loose-Hair asked.

  “We do not intend to stand idly by and let our country shame itself in this way,” Catfish said. “We intend to . . . do something about the American commodore. Or, if not him, the spy for the Americans—Nakahama—that boy’s master.” Catfish pointed at Yoshi.“Manjiro. He will be there, no doubt.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Needs-a-Shave asked.

  Catfish turned his gaze on Yoshi and said, “Before I speak, the little samurai must go. I don’t trust him. If he is willing to tell us what his master says, he is surely willing to report what we say to his master.”

  There was a rumble of agreement, and Yoshi was escorted out. A coin was plunked in his hand, and he was shooed down the street. He slunk away, wondering what kind of scheme they were hatching, and glad that he hadn’t told them everything. He had not told them that Manjiro would not be allowed to go to Kanagawa, where the treaty was to be discussed. He had also not told them, since they hadn’t asked, that he himself would be going. Not officially, of course, but as Manjiro’s spy. He looked at the coin in his hand. With this, he finally had enough money to repay Ozawa. Yoshi felt sure that he would find him, for hadn’t the engraver said, “Wherever the barbarians are, there you’ll find Ozawa”?

  Perhaps Yoshi would also be able to find out, when they were all in Kanagawa, what these soba shop samurai were plotting.

  PART THREE

  WIND

  In order to understand yourself you must understand others.

  —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

  27

  JACK ALOFT

  Monday, February 13, 1854

  Aloft and furl the topsails!” the lieutenant ordered.

  Jack grasped a deadeye, hoisted himself up onto the ratlines, and began climbing. He followed Toley, who was behind Willis. Other topmen scrambled up the port-side rigging.

  Toley was growling something at Willis, and Jack heard Willis say, “I never did!” after which Toley grabbed Willis’s foot and yanked.

  “Leave off!” Willis cried, kicking at Toley’s hand.

  “Avast, Toley!” Jack barked at him. Toley could pull the boy clear off the rigging!

  Toley turned his mean-eyed squint on Jack. “This is between me and Willis,” he said.

  In the meantime, Willis had scrambled up and out of the way.

  “Flapjacket!” a mate shouted from below. “What in the name of ginger cake is the snag? Into the top, lad, and sprightly now!”

  Toley moved ahead, and Jack followed.

  Once the topmen were all aloft and spread out along the yard, Griggs had a word with Jack. “Ye should pick yer fights below—”

  “It wasn’t my—” Jack started, but Griggs went on.

  “You with enough delinquenchies already, what with the marlinspike, the pigs, the tangly lines, and the lost squilgee, too,” Griggs added.

  It was true. On deck, Jack was a bumbling oaf. He’d dropped a splicing hammer on a midshipman’s toes. He’d tumbled down deck ladders, left the pigpen unlatched, and regularly lost his buttons, among other transgressions. But that was on deck.

  Aloft was where he excelled. He was quick at climbing the ratlines, and he was fast and sure at casting off gaskets, and reefing sails, too. The first few times he’d gone aloft to loose sails, he’d continually expected to feel himself falling. It was just like in a book he’d been reading about a seafarer who, upon going aloft to loose the skysail, thought, “I seemed all alone; treading the midnight clouds; and every second, expected to find myself falling—falling—falling, as I have felt when the nightmare has been on me.” When Jack read that, he’d thought, That’s just how I used to feel. But not any longer. Now, sometimes, even after his task was done, he’d stay up there, the higher the better.

  “Halloo!” came a shout from the deck, and then a call to “clew up the upper topsail.”

  Jack went to work pulling the lines attached to the sail. But in the middle of it, something caught his eye. He had been so busy with his task that he hadn’t looked out until now. So he hadn’t seen, rising out of the misty distance, the green hills and gleaming cliffs of white chalk, the tops of precipices, and—seeming to float above all else, as if detached from the rest of the earth—the white-topped cone of Mount Fuji.

  Japan! After six months away, they had returned. The commodore had said a year, but he had changed his mind and brought the fleet—eight vessels this time—back to its shores. It was strange, Jack thought, but his heart seemed to lift. Something, maybe the sight of Fuji floating there, as if having nothing anchoring it to earth, made him feel that anything might happen.

  The drumroll began, the bosun’s whistle twittered, and the shout rang out, “General quarters!”

  Jack began his scramble down the rigging. Yes, he thought, something was going to happen. Maybe even something good.

  Mount Fuji, seen from the beach. (Ando Hiroshige)

  28

  KANAGAWA

  3rd Day of the Month of New Life, 7th Year of Kaei

  (March 31, 1854)

  The Americans were back. There were the Black Ships, anchored smugly in the bay. And there, emptying from their boats and swarming onto the shore, were the blue-jacketed soldiers. Those jackets fit their hairy bodies so snugly that Yoshi was reminded of white rice tightly rolled into strips of seaweed. It would have been hard to take the soldiers seriously if they weren’t also very tall, very large, and every single one with a saber at his side or a musket on his shoulder.

  Yoshi elbowed his way through the hundreds and hundreds of curious onlookers, all hoping to catch a glimpse of the strange foreigners. Once through the spectators, he faced a jumble of guards and police, foot soldiers, pikemen, cavalrymen, officers, and the great lord
s themselves in their painted silk and embroidered brocade. How, he wondered, would he ever find Ozawa in this crowd?

  Yoshi’s eyes drifted over all these people until finally settling on a row of artists sketching away. And there! The familiar round, bald head with its ring of white hair: Ozawa. For a moment, Yoshi just stood and gazed at the artist who had been so good to him. It seemed like years ago, but it had only been a few months since he’d last seen him.

  Ozawa looked up as Yoshi approached.

  “You!” the artist exclaimed. “I heard you drowned. Are you a ghost?”

  “I did drown,” Yoshi answered, “but only for a few moments. I am ashamed to say I let the money go so that I could live. It was a dishonorable act.”

  “Not at all,” Ozawa said. “For had you drowned, the money would have drowned with you. I would have lost my money anyway, and the world would have lost you.”

  “That would not be so great a loss,” Yoshi mumbled.

  “Do not say so!” Ozawa said. “You can never know that. Even today you might do a great thing.”

  Yoshi smiled and shook his head. “I doubt that,” he said. “My most humble apologies for the trouble I caused. Please forgive me, Master Ozawa, for all the wrongs I have committed. It was my great honor to serve you. I beg you to accept payment for what I owe you.”

  Yoshi emptied a pouch full of coins into Ozawa’s hands—all he had earned.

  “Well!” Ozawa said. “You must have met with good fortune!”

  “I am working at the shogun’s stables now,” Yoshi said.

  “Ah!” Ozawa exclaimed. “You see? Your drawings were magic.” When Yoshi looked at him quizzically, he explained, “Those horses you drew came to life, just like Sesshu’s rats!”

  Yoshi laughed. “Maybe you are right.”

  “I have something for you, little bushi.” Ozawa presented him with a small drawing kit and some fine rice paper. “You know a samurai needs to be well-rounded. ‘The arts of peace in the left hand and the art of war in the right,’ so the ancients say.”