The Love of a Silver Fox: Folk Tales from Seki CIty

by Darvin Babiuk

  ***THE END***

  WAKASA'S POEM

  By Masuko Ozeki

  This is a story from the Warring States period four hundred years ago. It's about a young girl called Wakasa who lived on Tanega Shima. Morning came early on the island, the sun rising from the surface of the ocean to peek in through the white paper doors in Wakasa's room, shine in her eyes and wake her up.

  "Ah, I can still hear the happy sound of the Nagara River bubbling in my ears," she said, dawdling in bed and daydreaming about her childhood days. Even though her family had moved here nine years ago, she still thought about her life in Mino almost every day.

  "The clear water flowing down from the mountains and the shadows of the deep green forest. In fall, the leaves turned deep red and there were fruits and nuts everywhere you looked. I'd like to go back just once more."

  "CLANG! CLANG!" came the sound of iron being hammered from outside, jarring her from her thoughts. "Ah, Dad's awake," Wakasa said. "I've overslept again. I've got to get up earlier. He's probably already out there working as hard as he can." She could feel the strength and power of her father, Kinbeh, through the sounds of the strong, furious hammering coming from the bellows.

  Wakasa's father, Kinbeh Yaita, was a master sword-maker from Seki in the country of Nohshuh (present-day Gifu). After that, he worked at Honnohji Temple in the capital city. But then came the religious strife with the Hokeshyuu Buddhist sect in the fifth year of the reign of Tenmon (1536) and he came to Tanega Island with his family where the four of them now lived: Kinbeh; Wakasa; her mother, Kamejo; and her little brother, Kiyoga.

  "I wonder how father's gun is going," wondered Wakasa. "I hope he makes a good one."

  Her father, Kinbeh, had been appointed by Lord Tokitakakoh as the Master Sword-maker on Tanega Island in charge of making an iron gun like the ones the Portuguese ships had recently brought to Japan. Until the foreigners came, they had never seen such instruments of destruction before. The foreigners were new, and contact with them had been limited to those who lived on Tanega Island.

  "Aren't you up yet, Wakasa?" came the sound of her mother's voice. "Your father and the others are going to be here soon. Hurry up. Kohshiroh's coming today, too."

  "Kohshiroh? Kohshiroh's coming?" Wakasa's cheeks blushed a deep red when she heard the name of Kinbeh's favourite student spoken. "Alright, Mom. I'm coming."

  A week later, the long-waited for gun was finally finished and Kinbeh took it at once to Lord Tokitakakoh's castle to be inspected. Lord Tokitakakoh was very pleased to see the deep black gun and ordered Kinbeh to come back the next day to fire a demonstration shot and make sure it worked. So, early the next morning, Kinbeh gathered up several of his favourite students and set off together for Lord Tokitakakoh's castle again.

  "Wakasa? Are you there? Wakasa?" called the feeble sound of her mother's voice several hours after they'd gone.

  "What is it, Mom? What's the matter?" Wakasa said, dashing outside. Her mother was sitting there, face deathly white, her back planted firmly against a tree in the garden to keep her from falling over.

  "What is it, Mom! Sit down and catch your breath!" At the sound of her troubled voice, her little brother, Kiyoga, came running outside, too.

  "What is it? What happened?" he yelled, surprised to see his mother propped up against the tree.

  Immediately, the two of them started to rub her back to bring the colour back into her face.

  "Ah, thank you. That's enough. I'm okay now," she answered after a while, the tone in her voice telling them she wasn't. Something awful must have happened. Unsteadily, she got to her feet and began to walk. Worried, Kiyoga and Wakasa looked at each other, then began to follow her uneasily. After she'd composed herself, she sat down again, her face stiff as the back of her kimono.

  "Wakasa. Kiyoga," she began quietly. "I have some bad news to tell you. It's your father. He failed. The gun fired, but the bullets came out in all sorts of crazy directions."

  "Is father . . . ?" the two of them asked together. They couldn't help but think the worst when she put it that way.

  "No, no. Your father's alright," said Kamejo in a choked voice. "It wasn't him. Tamekichi . . . Tamekichi . . . One of his eyes . . . " Kamejo sobbed, bursting into tears on her sleeve.

  "Blind? You mean he's blind?" The two of them were shocked. Tamekichi was Kinbeh's newest pupil. He didn't have any parents or relatives, and had come to Kinbeh to learn a trade and be taken care of. Now this. Just the thought of it robbed Wakasa and Kiyoga of the ability to speak.

  "What can your father think?" muttered Kamejo quietly, lying on the ground, covering her face.

  "They worked as hard as they could on that gun and all it did was take poor Tamekichi's eye."

  Hearing her mother speak that way, in such a low voice, was enough to tear at Wakasa's heart. "This probably hurts him more than anyone right now," she muttered.

  "Maybe," said Kamejo, raising her head to reason with herself. "But Tamekichi's not dead. He escaped death and we have to be thankful for that." It didn't sound so bad when she put it like that. After he had calmed his mother down, Kiyoga went to Lord Tokitakakoh's castle and bring his father home. Sitting in the dark waiting, Wakasa thought quietly about Tamekichi and Kinbeh and tried to keep herself from crying. It was very late by the time they got home.

  The next day, Kinbeh was like a different man. If before, you couldn't get him away from his forge, now he refused to go near it. Thin and worn-out, he left the house early every morning. No one knew where he went, but it was very late by the time he got back.

  By then, New Year's had passed and Wakasa could feel the first signs of spring in the night air. Lying quietly in her narrow bed with her eyes closed, she could hear the sounds of the wind blowing in from the ocean striking faintly against the rain shutters. Listening to the sounds of the wind and sniffing in the faint smell of the beach on the breeze, Wakasa began to think to herself.

  Ever since the Portuguese ships had brought the iron guns to their island, their peaceful life had changed completely. From morning to night, all her father thought about was guns. And all they'd brought was grief. She wondered where their peaceful life of old had gone.

  What was even stranger was the way her father was acting after coming back from Lord Tokitakakoh's castle today. He'd rushed straight to the forge and didn't leave for a long, long time. She wondered what Lord Tokitakakoh had said to make him act that way.

  "I wonder if he's gone to bed yet?" she thought. Quietly, she got up and looked towards her father's room. That was strange. The light was still on.

  "Can't Mom and Dad sleep tonight, either?" she wondered. Stranger still, she could hear her mother, who never cried, sobbing faintly, so she slipped out of her room and crept quietly over to see what the matter was.

  "Oh, poor Wakasa! My poor daughter."

  "I won't give her away. Not my daughter. Not to a Portuguese," she heard her mother and father whispering in the darkness. Immediately, her ears pricked up. They were talking about her.

  "It's terrible," Kinbeh was saying, his voice growing louder little by little so that she didn't have any trouble hearing it.

  "Lord Tokitakakoh's ordered me to make that gun, but I don't understand the inner workings at all. If I fail again, he'll kill me. That Portuguese on the ship, Borahryo, says he'll teach me, but only if I give him Wakasa. He wants her for his wife. He says she reminds him of his mother.

  "No, not Wakasa!" sobbed Kamejo. "She's my daughter!"

  "All because I'm so weak," lamented Kinbeh, beating himself. "Why couldn't I have been born a Lord? Then I could protect her. No, there's no way! I won't do it. Don't worry, Kamejo! I don't need Borahryo. I'll make the gun by myself. I'll give it another try. I'll show them. I'll make that gun."

  Give her to a Portuguese! For a wife! Wakasa was so shocked she couldn't even cry out in surprise. Somehow or other, though, she managed to calm herself down enough to walk unsteadily back to her bed.

 
"I wonder what it's all about?" she thought. "I don't want to leave this island. And I don't want to be separated from my Mom and Dad. Or Kohshiroh, either."

  Wakasa couldn't believe it. But the sadness and pain etched into the voices of her father and mother were already burnt into her ears. She would never forget them. She curled her body up into a ball and cried the night away, taking care to keep her sobs from getting past the room.

  The next day, her mother looked terrible, sighing every time she looked at Wakasa. Kinbeh, for his part, spent the entire day, from early morning until late night, in the forge, working hard over his bellows. At noon, Wakasa brought him his lunch, and stood watching him unnoticed from behind. From time to time, he would look back, and Wakasa was shocked. Her father's face looked like a devil, his eyes red and his brow knit into a furious frown. The hollow sound of iron being violently beaten echoed throughout the house for the rest of the day.

  Day after day, week after week, the scene continued. Kinbeh's body wasted away, the flesh hanging in loose folds over his skin. He hadn't left the forge for days. Little by little, though, the sounds of the hammer striking the iron, and the bellows pumping out air grew quieter and quieter until one day they stopped altogether.

  On the evening of the third day after the activity in the forge stopped, Wakasa couldn't stand it any longer. She went into the fire pit, where women weren't permitted to go. It was completely dark, Kinbeh sitting there quietly before the forge in the dark, his head hanging and his arms folded, eyes shut tightly in defeat.

  "Father," Wakasa said, standing quietly before her father. She didn't understand the mechanism of a gun, but she could understand the pain of seeing her father sitting alone in the dark. She couldn't leave him like that.

  "Wakasa?"

  "Never mind, Father," she said. "It's okay. I'll go. To Portugal."

  "What?" her father said in surprise.

  She had decided several days before. If it would keep her father from being killed, she would go.

  "What? What are you talking about, Wakasa?" her father asked, surprised and confused.

  "Don't say anything, Dad. I've already decided."

  Her father stared at her a long time, thinking.

  "No, you don't have to," he finally said, his mind made up. “You can leave the island. With your mother. Run away together."

  "Run away? But what will happen to you?"

  "Me? Oh, I'll be alright . . . "

  "No, father," Wakasa said. She knew what would happen to him. He'd be killed. "I've already decided. I'm going. To Portugal."

  "Why was I born such a weak man," Kinbeh groaned. "Please forgive me."

  They didn't know it, but Kamejo had come into the fire pit, too, and she stood there holding back tears, unable to move. The thought of losing her daughter was too much. A few days later, with Borahryo's help, the mechanism of the gun was finished. And a little while later, a small ceremony was held for Borahryo's and Wakasa's wedding.

  The start of spring on the fourteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tenmon, was to be the day Wakasa left Tanega Island forever. She woke early, only to find her Mother sitting by her pillow.

  "Come here, Wakasa," she said. "And sit. I'd like to comb your hair for a bit."

  Nodding, Wakasa sat obediently in front of her mother.

  "You know what this makes me think of?" she asked, gently combing Wakasa's hair. From time to time, her hand would stop and Wakasa could feel them tremble. "When you were a little girl in Mino and we'd sit like this. Do you remember?"

  "Oh, mother!" Memories of the happy days she'd spent in Mino with her mother long ago passed through the warmth in her mother's trembling hands and came to Wakasa's eyes.

  It's the last day, she thought. I'll never get to meet her again. Just once, I'd like to go back to Mino and spend one of those happy days together.

  "Is everything ready?" her father asked, coming into the room and trying to hold back his tears.

  "Are the preparations all done?" he asked.

  "Yes, Mom's got it all done."

  "If there's anything you want, all you have to do is say," her father said.

  "No, there's nothing I need. Good luck, Dad. You've taken good care of me," Wakasa said crying. It would be the last words she ever said to her father.

  "Wakasa, forgive me, but I can't talk. I can't tell you how bad I feel. I've written my thoughts down on this piece of paper. If you ever get lonely, read it."

  He handed her a piece of paper, and Wakasa hugged him, trying desperately to keep the tears in. If she started crying now, she would never stop. She looked at her mother and father's faces. Her mother was worried, with deep wrinkles over her eyes and her father seemed to have grown old overnight.

  It was too painful to stay in there anymore, so she ran outside. Kiyoga was waiting, with a small box in his hand. Kohshiroh had asked him to give it to her.

  "Kohshiroh? He's not here? He didn't come."

  "He said that it hurt too much to see you go. That he couldn't bear to see you leave."

  Hearing Kiyoga talk about being separated from Kohshiroh forever, Wakasa's shoulders began to shake and she tried to remember what he looked like. Then, she opened the box. Inside, was a small sword in a red sheath with "Wakasa" written in red letters on the side. Kohshiroh, her father's favourite pupil, had made it for her. It was what meant more than anything in the world to him, so Wakasa knew how strong his thoughts were for her.

  Then, before she knew it, it was time to go and she was out in the bay on the Iris, the ship that would take her away from Japan. One by one, the sails on the mast were raised, filling themselves and making themselves big to flutter in the cool breezes left over from the spring. Watching the island that meant she was being separated from Japan further and further, thoughts of all that happened to her in her happy life flashed through Wakasa's mind. The wake of the ship left a thin white sash in the big blue ocean. It got longer and longer, the island smaller and smaller. Soon, all it was was a point in the distance, then it disappeared entirely.

  "Goodbye, Mother" Wakasa called. "Goodbye, Father. Goodbye, Tanega Island and Mino happy days. Goodbye. Goodbye forever." Behind Wakasa's dim tears, all the thoughts of the happy days she'd spent here disappeared with the island.

  After that, on Tanega Island, a rumour spread about a poem a beautiful married woman had written in the country of Siam longing for her native country. Even now, if you recite that poem, it will bring tears to the eyes of people on Tanega Island. It goes like this: "If I look at the sun and the moon or the direction of Japan, I long for my parents."