Bloody Sunrise

by Christopher Nicole

  The young man bowed. ‘My name is Togo Heihachiro, honourable sir. Is it true that you are an officer in the Royal Navy?’

  ‘I am, and so is my companion,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Then I am honoured to make your acquaintance.’ Togo Heihachiro bowed again.

  ‘Togo san is interested in everything to do with ships and the sea,’ Saigo explained. ‘He has journeyed to Edo to see the barbarian ships, but to his disappointment was not allowed on board. Be careful with him, Barrett san: he will wish to pick your brains.’

  ‘One day Japan will have a fleet like the Royal Navy,’ Togo said reverently. ‘And I shall serve in it.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ Tom cried.

  ‘Are you pleased with your house, Barrett san?’ Saigo asked.

  ‘Pleased? I am delighted.’

  ‘Good. Tomorrow you start work. But for today, why, I have arranged for some geisha to come in and entertain us.’

  ‘Geisha?’ Nicholas asked, glancing at Tom.

  ‘You must not confuse geisha with prostitutes, Barrett san. You asked me just now if we never felt the need to shed our dignity. Certainly, it is not something a samurai may do in public, or even in private, where members of his own family are concerned. Thus the geisha. They are trained, almost from birth, to entertain. That, at the end of the evening, they may be persuaded to satisfy one’s desire, is a matter of chance to many. But not to Saigo-no-Takamori. Today we shall celebrate your arrival amongst us, Barrett san.’

  *

  ‘And so I drink to you, Lieutenant Barrett.’ Togo Heihachiro raised his cup. ‘May I one day have the pleasure of serving with you at sea.’

  ‘I will drink to that too,’ Saigo said.

  Nicholas’ cup was empty. But the girl, her name was Kika, was already refilling it, kneeling beside him as she poured from the heated kettle. Kika! A pretty name for a pretty thing. At least, he supposed she was pretty; it was difficult to be sure, for her face was completely covered in caked white make-up, and when she smiled, he saw that her teeth were painted black. A geisha. She had served him throughout the meal, like any other serving girl, and yet, there had been more. She had anticipated what would follow, and expected that he would be doing the same. There was not a hint of lewdness in her behaviour, or in anything she did, and, he thought, although he could not understand her, in anything she said, either; but there was a special air of intimacy in the way she attended to him. A practised intimacy, there was the rub. He could not get it out of his mind that it was all practised here. ‘To a voyage together,’ he said.

  ‘We shall sail to the very sun,’ Togo declared.

  Incredibly, the boy was drunk. So was Saigo. They had not struck Nicholas as belonging to a nation which believed in drunkenness, unlike the English. And he found it difficult to believe that it was possible to get drunk on a few cups of sake. On the other hand, Tom was definitely drunk, and bemused by the girl who was serving him. But perhaps they were just drunk with anticipation. ‘Let us have dancing,’ Saigo said.

  The four girls giggled, and picked up their fans. They rose together, fluttering the fans in front of their faces. Four gaily coloured butterflies. Kika wore a crimson kimono; of the others, one was in pale blue, one in green, and one in yellow. Unlike the women Nicholas had previously seen, their hair was bound on the top of their heads, rather like a samurai’s topknot, although of course their scalps were not shaven. And now they danced, if that was the right word, for they did not move their feet, but remained standing in front of the four men, swaying their bodies, using their hands and fingers in a variety of gestures, extending and closing their fans, while from beyond the screens someone, no doubt instructed by Kisuda, who had taken a great interest in this feast, plucked the strings of some lute-like instrument. And the girls also knew their parts. Each had eyes only for her lord of the night. Kika never failed to gaze at Nicholas, never ceased to smile, her lips a wide red gash in the white of her paint. So what did he feel? By now, no doubt, his rod should be hard as iron, his body sweating with anticipation. He had not known a woman since an unsatisfactory visit to a Chinese brothel several months before. But he kept thinking of Masaru Sumiko.

  The music stopped, and the girls also stopped, lowering their fans and bowing from the waist. For a few seconds the room was still, disturbed only by a belch from Saigo. And then the general gave a sudden bellow, and scrambled to his feet. The girl in blue uttered a shriek and ran for the door. Saigo reached for her, and she ducked under his arm, uttered another cry, or was it really a giggle, and darted into the doorway. There she hesitated, but as Saigo reached for her again, she laughed once more and ran through, the general behind her. Togo now followed his uncle’s example, and chased the girl in yellow through the doorway. The other two girls remained still, watching the two Englishmen. But Tom was clearly very aroused. ‘When in Rome,’ he laughed, and ran behind the girl in green.

  Kika remained, standing still, her face smiling prettily, her eyes apparently quiescent, although they moved from time to time. Nicholas presumed she felt a certain anxiety, for fear this strange man from across the sea might wish something out of the ordinary. So then, what could he wish, that would be out of the ordinary, for a geisha, who was, after all, merely a prostitute? He wanted her, now. And yet, he was reluctant to get up and chase her about the house like a schoolboy. Perhaps that would heighten passion. But it was not what he wanted, and here, in his own house, at last, was he able to take what he wanted. He beckoned with his finger. Kika hesitated for a moment, and then came round the little table that remained in front of him, and knelt on the mat beside him. Her eyes were wide, her face now anxious.

  Speaking would be a waste of time. He reached for her girdle, slowly released it so that it fell on each side of her knees, allowing her kimono to open as well. She hesitated, then did the same for him. He had already discarded his tunic, so she unbuttoned his shirt, with great interest. Slowly he parted the kimono. She wore nothing underneath, as he had observed when she was dancing. He wondered how old she was? Older than the girls who had been appointed to serve him, and the girls who had bathed him in Bungo. Older than Masaru Sumiko? Her breasts filled his hand, and the nipples were hard and large where the breasts themselves were small; they were like pebbles caressing his palm. To his relief, her body was not made up; he had half expected it to be, after her face. But this was a yellow-brown delight. And now, his shirt opened, she was doing the same to him. But his nipples were insufficiently large to please her. She glanced at him, then leaned forward, still kneeling, to lick each one into hardness.

  He looked down on the head of glossy black hair. Good God, he thought. I am Nicholas Barrett, Lieutenant R.N. I am aged twenty-two, and I have not two pennies to rub together. And here I have my own whore, in my own house. For how many years had he dreamed of being in such a position, like some wealthy squire, of owning, so much? Kika’s head rested on his chest, for a moment, and was then raised again to look at him. Her mouth was only inches away. But to touch the white cheeks, to let his tongue brush against the blackened teeth, seemed obscene. Besides, he could still see those teeth picking at the raw fish during their tempura dinner. The fish that had still been gasping for breath, while Saigo had expertly sliced the flesh from its ribs, and the girls had giggled, and reached for the food.

  Kika began to work on his pants, more in curiosity than passion. Her kimono was now entirely open, and her body was exposed to him. And black teeth or not, he could no longer resist her. He lay back, and she shrugged the kimono away entirely, then, face serious with concentration, she released the last button of his flies and pulled his pants down, to pause in dismay at the white drawers beneath. But these too she tackled, and then paused again, her face, even beneath its makeup, the picture of consternation. Undoubtedly she had never seen a penis that large. But now he was not going to be checked, even by her fear. His hands circled her buttocks and brought her down to him. Now she was panting, and when he rolled her on her back she st
ared up at him in stark terror, again being exposed to something beyond her experience. ‘I shall not hurt you, little girl,’ he promised her, as he eased himself into her.

  *

  The next day Nicholas and Tom reported to the castle for duty, to be introduced to several samurai commanders. Most of them spoke Dutch, and regarded the naval uniforms with great interest: they all wore armour. ‘We shall have to have a suit made for you, Barrett san,’ Saigo said. ‘Certain it is that there is no armour at present in existence that would fit you.’ He was as grave as ever. The excited satyr of the previous night might have been a dream. Nor did he give the slightest indication that he had had a great deal to drink.

  ‘I will do without armour, if you don’t mind, General,’ Nicholas said. ‘It is not worn in the West.’

  Saigo frowned. ‘I can understand that sailors might not require it, but you are saying your armies do not wear armour? How do they survive?’

  ‘By manoeuvre and concealment. I showed you what my revolver could do. A modern rifle is far more powerful than a revolver. It would penetrate one of your armour suits at a distance of half a mile.’ The samurai exchanged glances. They thought he was lying, or at least exaggerating. Saigo then took the two Englishmen to inspect the garrison, drawn up on parade in the inner courtyard. They were a fine looking body of men, and well armed with swords and spears and bows, but . . . ‘Have they no firearms?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘Firearms are for cowards,’ growled one of the samurai generals.

  ‘We have troops equipped with firearms,’ Saigo said. ‘It is merely that Lord Shimadzu will not have the castle garrison so armed. Lord Shimadzu holds to the old virtues.’

  ‘Your firearms, are they rifled?’ Nicholas asked. The samurai looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Are there grooves inside the barrels?’ he attempted to explain. ‘This makes a bullet travel faster and more accurately.’

  ‘They have not heard of this,’ Saigo confessed. ‘I will show you our cannon.’ There were a large number of these, mounted in the embrasures looking out over the bay. Nicholas recognised them as smooth-bore nine-pounders, such as might have been used by the British at Waterloo; they would have a maximum elevated range of just over a mile, and an accurate range of a quarter of that distance. He supposed they might be quite useful in repelling an enemy attempting to make an assault on the town itself, but they would be useless if opposed to a fleet prepared to sit out of range in the bay and blast them.

  ‘If you ever wish to fight a barbarian fleet,’ he told Saigo, ‘you will have to obtain more modern weapons.’

  ‘These guns have protected Kagoshima Wan for fifty years,’ Saigo protested.

  ‘That is the problem. It is the next fifty years you should be concerned with.’

  *

  The following day Saigo took him back to see Lord Shimadzu. By then Nicholas had written his letter to the Senior Naval Officer, c/o the British Consulate, Edo, and Saigo had promised it would be despatched with all haste. Now he had to do the best he could with these people, if he was going to remain here for the next few weeks. ‘You have decided what it is we require to give us superiority over all the other armies in Japan?’ inquired Shimadzu.

  ‘Firstly, my lord, you need modern cannon to defend your walls. Those you have might make useful field pieces on land, but they are useless for a modern naval campaign. Then you need to raise a regiment of riflemen, that is, soldiers armed not with bows and arrows, or smooth-bore muskets, but with rifled weapons which will strike an enemy down at half a mile or more.’

  Shimadzu had an animated exchange with Saigo, the daimyo obviously asking his general if the Englishman could possibly be telling the truth. Saigo apparently convinced him of this, for he now asked. ‘How may a man see what he is aiming at, half a mile away?’

  ‘It is possible, my lord, with training and accuracy,’ Nicholas said. ‘And a rifle has the added advantage that a man may fire from a concealed position, and thus stand a better chance of surviving any return of shot.’

  ‘Is that an honourable way of fighting?’ Shimadzu demanded. ‘Shooting men with muskets is bad enough, but there at least a warrior looks upon the face of the man he kills, as samurai have always done. To shoot a man down from half a mile distance, and from under cover, that surely cannot be pleasing to the gods.’

  ‘I am afraid, my lord, in this modern world, the gods have shown a tendency to favour the side with the best weapons.’

  ‘Are the barbarians armed with such weapons?’

  ‘Every barbarian army is so equipped, my lord. And many of their ships are armed with rifled cannon. There is a man called Captain Dahlgren, of the United States Navy, who has invented a rifled cannon which will throw a nine-inch shell, that is, a missile nine inches in diameter . . .’ he held his hands apart to illustrate his point, ‘packed with explosive, weighing more than two men put together, and shaped into a point, so that it will penetrate wood and even iron, and then burst, raining iron splinters all around it. It has a range of two and a half miles, that is, more than twice the distance of your guns out there. There is no more powerful weapon in the world today. A barbarian fleet, armed with such guns, would reduce your city, and this citadel, to rubble in a few hours.’

  ‘How may such a gun be loaded,’ Shimadzu inquired, ‘if the shot is so heavy?’

  ‘The shot is craned into position, my lord.’

  Shimadzu stroked his chin. ‘Can such guns be bought?’

  ‘Not as freely as rifles, my lord. You would have to negotiate with either the American government, or the British. We also have such guns, from the firm of Armstrong.’

  ‘This is something we must consider,’ Shimadzu said.

  *

  Nicholas and Tom set out to train the gunners to work with the precision of a Royal Navy team. Saigo also insisted that they learn something of Japanese weapons, and especially the use of the sword. ‘For,’ he said with one of his grim smiles, ‘you may need to defend yourselves before you have your regiment of riflemen.’ My regiment of riflemen? Nicholas wondered. He had no intention of becoming involved in any Japanese civil war. And if he did have to defend himself, he was determined to use his revolver. On the other hand, he had won a prize for swordsmanship just before leaving England, and he was interested to learn something about this massive Japanese weapon.

  It was certainly quite unlike any European sword, both in size and use. And to his delight, their teacher turned out to be their old friend Tadatune. However, he appeared to regard the two Englishmen as sceptically as did everyone else in Kagoshima, and seemed less interested in teaching them how to handle the sword than in illustrating their ineptitude.

  The long hilt of the Japaness sword called for both hands, and the art consisted of delivering blows of great power combined with a quite startling physical dexterity. Nicholas and Tom were amazed at the way Tadatune, advancing with his blade held directly in front of him, the haft immediately before his belly, would suddenly be galvanised into action, perform not one but two gigantic sweeps to describe a perfect figure of eight, each sweep certainly powerful enough to cut through any flesh or bone that might be opposed to it, but yet treating the double delivery as merely a part of his manoeuvre which involved leaping several times through the air to arrive at a position a good eight feet from where he had originally been standing, turning and again presenting his weapon, as perfectly balanced as before the whole play began, and scarcely breathing the harder for his exertions. Nicholas attempted to follow his example, with a total lack of success. He could perform the figure of eight, but considerably slower than the Japanese. Nor could he leap as far or as quickly, and when he turned, it took him too long to regain his balance. ‘You are a dead man, Barrett san,’ Tadatune commented. ‘Now, let us see if Ebury san can do better.’ Tom did somewhat worse, as he was not even a swordsman in English eyes. ‘We must do it again,’ Tadatune said. And again, and again, and again. Progress, if there was any, was painfully slow.

 
; Tadatune also delighted in teaching them the exact performance of seppuku. ‘For this,’ he explained, ‘is just as important an art as the handling of the long sword. When a samurai decides to die with honour, he strips to the waist and sits cross-legged on a tatami mat. It is normal to have one’s friends and relatives to witness the event, but this is not always possible, as, for instance, after defeat in battle. Yet must he always have a second to assist him. Where a friend is not available, someone must be found, even a servant if there is no one else. The reason is that no one expects a samurai to die in slow agony. It is sufficient that he make the decision to take his own life. The decision is the difficult part for the faint-hearted. Now listen carefully, and watch. The short sword is taken in both hands, so, with the blade pointed inwards. You will see that unlike the long sword, the short sword has a sharp point as well as a sharp edge. Held in both hands, like this, it is driven into the left side of the belly, so.’ He made the movement, but of course stopped short of his flesh. ‘Then the blade is turned, and pulled to the right, thus opening the entire abdomen, so that the intestines spill out. Once the whole gut has been exposed, death is inevitable. Then, and only then, Barrett san, the dying man may release the haft of his sword with his right hand and throw his right arm away from his body in a horizontal movement, like this. At that signal, his friend will strike his head from his body with a single sweep of the long sword. I may say that the second who fails to obey that signal instantly, or who fails to strike off the head with a single blow, is as dishonoured as if he had refused seppuku himself. But the second is never blamed for any transgression of the law by the dying man. I mention this because it is said that on occasion a samurai in the past has thrown out his right arm the moment the short sword has entered his body, and before the transverse cut has been made. This is dishonourable. But the second must yet act upon the signal, instantly. It is the dead man who has committed the dishonourable act.’