Runaway Horses

by Yukio Mishima

  One officer, having observed this, took command of some troops and formed them into two rings on the drill field with their bayonets pointing in every direction like the spines of a thistle, in order to counterattack. To confront this threat, the elder Masamoto Aikyo grasped his spear, whose use he had so well mastered, and marshaling some ten of his comrades, who aligned their spears with his, charged into the massed infantrymen. The troops broke formation at once and fled. One man alone held his ground, Cadet Lieutenant Tarao, and he fell with spears through his body.

  Earlier, two officers who had been quartered off post, First Lieutenant of Infantry Sataké and Cadet Lieutenant Numata, were hastening back to camp, aroused by the sight of the flames. At Hoke Slope they met some of the routed troops and learned how the issue stood. The waters of the moat which lay to the north of the slope shone scarlet from the fiery sky overhead. As the officers questioned the men, more straggled up in twos and threes, the inferno of the burning camp at their backs, and their shadows merged with those of the others.

  The two officers hotly chastised the troops for being out of uniform and almost speechless with terror. Thus they managed to rally a platoon of sixteen soldiers, but one which lacked both rifles and ammunition.

  It happened, however, that a man named Kichizo Tachiyama, a shrewd merchant who dealt with the military, made his appearance and proffered from his storehouse sufficient rifles, 180 rounds of ammunition, and one thousand percussion caps. The officers rejoiced immensely at this, and the morale of their battered troops rose at last. Thereupon, the two officers each took command of one half of their platoon and secretly made their way into the camp by different routes, Lieutenant Sataké by the rear gate and Cadet Numata by the emergency gate. Coming together once more, their number swelled by other survivors, the troops took up position in a still unburned barrack and commenced firing.

  Lieutenant Colonel Tomozané Yokura, the regimental commander, was at his residence in Kyomachi Heights when the assault of the third section of the First Unit fell upon it. The Lieutenant Colonel’s wife, Tsuruko, woke her husband the instant she heard the men of the League storming in through the front entrance, and he immediately grasped the situation and fled to the quarters occupied by his grooms. There he snatched a workman’s jacket off a hook and hurriedly donned it just as two or three of the League burst into the room. One struck him a blow on the shoulder with his sword, but when he pleaded: “Spare me! I am a groom,” he was able to extricate himself from his foes.

  The commander thereupon fled to a restaurant, the Ichijitsu, which stood to the rear of Kinzan Shrine. There his wound was hastily seen to by the proprietor, and the commander then shaved off his moustache and further disguised himself by putting on a servingman’s jacket. So attired, he made his way once more through the enemy force and at length reached the rear palisade of his infantry command.

  After he had climbed to the top and looked down within the camp, he caught sight of the hurrying figures of an officer and two enlisted men. Recognizing Captain Takigawa, the commander hailed him. The Captain stopped and stared for an instant in shocked surprise at the sight of his disguised commander atop the palisade. But then realizing that it was indeed he, the Captain hurried over as the commander descended and gave him a report on the battle. By that time the duty officer of the Second Battalion, Lieutenant Suzuki, had marshaled one company and was seeking to stave off defeat, but had run desperately short of ammunition. Captain Takigawa himself, together with the two soldiers, was now on his way to the magazine to obtain the ammunition left over from maneuvers.

  “Very well. Be quick about it,” replied Lieutenant Colonel Yokura abruptly. Then he rushed into the midst of his scattered troops, issuing orders and rallying his routed command. With their leader restored to them, the will to carry on flared up among the common soldiers.

  The supply of ammunition obtained by Lieutenant Sataké and by Captain Takigawa was augmented by that brought from general headquarters. Thus strengthened, the regiment was at last in a state to give an account of itself.

  At general headquarters Major Gentaro Kodama, a staff officer and later a general, had already arrived on the scene. Flinging wide the doors of the magazine, he supplied the soldiers dispatched by Lieutenant Colonel Yokura with ammunition. Then he himself led a company up to a high point on the castle’s innermost perimeter, where they were able to look down on the burning camp and see the figures of the men of the League clearly lit by flames in the fighting on the drill field. His troops took aim at the glittering armor, the ancient court robes, and the white headbands, and he gave the command to fire a volley.

  The Third Battalion of the regiment had been quartered separately in the gardens of the castle, and had escaped the onslaught of the League. Also, the previous day it had been supplied with Snider rifles and ammunition. Now these were issued to the troops of both its companies, who at once went to the relief of their comrades, the First Company hastening up Keitaku Slope, the Second Company penetrating the camp by crossing Geba Bridge.

  In the meantime, the Second Unit of the League under the command of Otaguro and Kaya, who had gone to aid in the assault upon the infantry garrison, smashed through the south gate into the camp only to find the tide of battle turned and themselves now entrapped. Under cover of buildings and stone walls they strove to come to grips with their foes, but helpless against the volleys of bullets, they could only grit their teeth and clench their fists. The arrival of the Second Unit had given the other men of the League their last hope. If a man exposed himself, he was struck at once. But if all clung to their cover, defeat was inevitable. There was no way to launch an attack upon the massed rifles.

  Sixty-six-year-old Kengo Ueno spoke out as he crouched in hiding and surveyed his comrades around him: “Though I insisted that we equip ourselves with firearms, no one would heed me, and now we have come to this pass.” In their hearts, all of them agreed.

  Yet what the men of the League had been willing to risk by renouncing the use of firearms had clarified their intent. Divine aid was to be theirs, and their very purpose was to challenge the Western arms hateful to the gods with swords alone. Western civilization would, as time went by, search out weapons still more terrible, and would direct them at Japan. And then might not the Japanese themselves, in their anxiety to counter these, fall into bestial fighting and lose all hope of restoring the ancient worship so revered by Master Oen? To rise to the combat bearing only the sword, to be willing to risk even crushing defeat—in no way but this could the fervent aspirations of each man of the League take expression. Here was the essence of the gallant Yamato Spirit.

  A fierce will inflaming the heart of each one, they broke from cover to charge across the fire-lit drill field.

  Raising his sword crafted by Rai Kunimitsu, Eiki Fukami, his comrade Haruhiko Numazawa at his side, dashed headlong through a hail of bullets. Almost at once Numazawa was hit in his right arm. Taking cover, he tore a strip from his tunic with his teeth and hastily wrapped it about his wounded arm. Fukami, after advancing another fifteen yards or so, went down with a bullet in his chest. Masahiko Fukuoka hastened to him, but as soon as he lifted him in his arms he realized that his comrade was dead, and he cried out with anguished rage. Forthwith he brandished his sword in fury and charged the massed foe, only to fall before a murderous volley. Then Numazawa, apparently unhampered by his wound, leapt to the assault once more, but a bullet pierced his left temple from the side. This time, he did not rise.

  Harukata Kaya was a master in the combined use of long sword and short. Now he raised his swords, nicked in countless desperate combats and covered with blood, and glared at the enemy. He saw his younger brother Shiro in his mind’s eye, Shiro who had disemboweled himself on Mount Tenno after the abortive assault of the Choshu samurai upon the Imperial Palace. Now he too, at age forty-one, would die impelled by the same spirit. Kaya had been unwilling to make common cause with the League in the venture, until the gods had indicated their approva
l only three days before. Yet he was without regrets. Here on this field he would join his fate forever with that of his comrades.

  Kaya brandished his swords and led the men around him in a fierce charge, drawing upon himself the concentrated fire of the enemy. Mortally wounded, he gave one last cry, “Hachiman, God of Battles!” and fell headlong.

  It was around this time that eighteen men of the League perished, among them the elder Kyusaburo Saito, together with Hitoshi Araki, Hironobu Saruwatari, and Tomo Noguchi. Some twenty others were wounded, including Masamoto Aikyo, Yoshinori Yoshimura, Kengo Ueno, and Yoshio Tominaga.

  Otaguro, glaring furiously and ignoring those who shouted to him to withdraw, plunged toward the enemy line. A bullet pierced his chest.

  Gunshiro Yoshioka, trusting in the keen blades of Onimaru and his comrades to check the assault of the bayonet-wielding government troops, bore up Otaguro on his shoulders and carried him down Hoke Slope, whence, with the aid of Otaguro’s brother-in-law Hideo Ono, he brought him into a house.

  Otaguro’s wound was mortal. He kept losing and regaining consciousness, but even so managed to ask Yoshioka and Ono in which direction his head lay. They answered, in turn, that it lay to the west. “His Divine Majesty dwells in the east. Make haste to have me sit with head poised accordingly,” Otaguro told them. They did so.

  Then Otaguro ordered Ono to strike off his head. His voice faint, he asked them to bear it to Shingai Shrine together with the Divine Simulacrum of Hachiman.

  The foe might well have come storming in at any moment. Hideo Ono had no will to strike his brother-in-law such a blow. But upon the exhortation of Yoshioka, he at last unsheathed his sword. Carefully wiping off the enemy blood that stained it, he purified its blade. Then he lifted it above his head and took aim at his brother-in-law’s neck. Yoshioka had helped Otaguro to sit up, head sagging, but facing toward the east. At the very instant that his brother-in-law’s torso, thus awkwardly positioned, was about to pitch forward, Ono’s blade came sweeping down.

  PART THE THIRD

  One with the Gods

  MOUNT KIMPO is less than four miles west of Kumamoto Castle, and, like the mountain in Yamato from which it takes its name, is revered as a sacred peak. At its crest stands a shrine dedicated to the deity Zao.

  Though small, the shrine has a long history. In 1333—the Third Year of the Genko era—Lord Takeshigé Kikuchi ascended to it in order to implore the divine favor before going into battle. Victory was his, and in gratitude he had the shrine rebuilt. According to tradition, he himself carved the Worship Image, reciting a triple prayer after each stroke. This represented the god as standing on the mountain peak with one hand raised, gazing at the armed host he had blessed. It was an image of victory.

  Now, however, the morning after the rising, early on the auspicious Ninth Day of the Ninth Month, the time of the Chrysanthemum Festival, there were gathered around the shrine forty-six hunted survivors of a defeated force. Some standing, some sitting, they stared blankly about them, though the penetrating autumn chill made their wounds sting. The clear light of the rising sun cast a striped pattern as it shone down through the branches of the few old cedars that surrounded the shrine. Birds were singing. The air was fresh and clear. As for signs of last night’s sanguinary combat, these were visible in the soiled and bloodstained garments, the haggard visages, and the eyes that burned like live embers.

  Among the forty-six were Unshiro Ishihara, Kageki Abé, Kisou Onimaru, Juro Furuta, Tsunetaro Kobayashi, the brothers Gitaro and Gigoro Tashiro, Tateki Ura, Mitsuo Noguchi, Mikao Kashima, and Kango Hayami. Every man was silent, sunk deep in thought, looking off at the sea, or at the mountains, or at the smoke still rising from Kumamoto.

  Such were the men of the League at rest on the slope of Kimpo, some with fingers yellowed from brushing the petals of wild chrysanthemums that they had plucked while staring across the water at Shimabara Peninsula.

  Before the break of day, the way leading to the sea had lain open to them in their flight. A man of the League, Juro Kagami, had been offered six boats by a family powerful in clan days, but these had become stuck fast in the mud left by the morning’s ebb tide and no amount of tugging or pushing could free them. Since they were being hotly pursued, the men of the League had no choice but to abandon the boats and make their way up Mount Kimpo.

  The foothills around them were interlaced with small valleys dotted with villages, and there were terraced fields and paddies far up the steep slopes. Some sort of white-flowered bush grew here and there, along with the ripening crops of rice plants. The mountain forest spread out over the undulating terrain around the patchwork of small villages scattered like so many cushions set out to dry, and the foliage of the trees, still a deep green in this early autumn, entrapped the subtle morning light to form delicate tracings of brightness and shadow. In these villages were the homes of men whose upbringing had been different from that of the men of the League. At some time in their lives, would they too feel the powerful emotions of a decisive battle? They whose lives now seemed so peaceful, so without incident?

  To the west of Kochi, a cape in the form of a seahorse stretched a green neck out into the sea. Still farther west was the fanshaped muddy delta of the Shirakawa. If a man shifted his gaze down from the kites circling in the sky over the mountain villages nearby, he saw the mud flat swarming with the huge birds, flapping their soiled-looking mottled brown wings.

  As for the sea below, Shimabara Peninsula opposite thrust itself out between Ariaké Bay and Amakusa Channel, its tip pressing upon the strait at Kimpo’s base. The water’s color was dark blue everywhere, except for a casual stroke of black at mid-strait, the effect of a tidal current. To the men of the League this seemed to be a divine omen, of uncertain significance.

  Nature had never been more beautiful than on this morning after defeat. All was clear and fresh and tranquil.

  Across the water on Shimabara Peninsula, the skirts of Mount Unzen stretched out wide to either side. Rows of tiny houses were clearly visible amid the foothills. The peak of Unzen lay concealed behind towering clouds. Off to the southwest, in Saga, the crest of Tara was shrouded in mist that but faintly revealed its outline. The clouds massed in the sky were shot through with a brightness that seemed to bode divinity.

  The sight vividly reminded the men on Mount Kimpo of the mystic teaching on the ascent to heaven that they had heard from Master Oen.

  According to the Master, there were but two means of ascent to heaven, and these were similar in nature. A man had to use either the Pillars of Heaven or the Floating Bridge of Heaven. Though these still existed unchanged from ancient days, ordinary men given over to defilement could not even see them, much less ascend by them to heaven. If men purged themselves of pollution and with pure hearts returned to the ways of old, then, like the godlike beings of those times, they would be empowered to see the Pillars of Heaven and the Floating Bridge of Heaven before their eyes and avail themselves of the means thus offered to mount to the high place where the gods dwell.

  Now divinity seemed so embodied in the bright-flecked clouds upon the mountain peaks that the watching men felt that they were viewing an epiphany of the Floating Bridge. Should they not turn their swords joyfully upon themselves and make an end to their lives? There were those, however, who had taken up a position on the cliff edge facing east and kept their gaze fastened upon Kumamoto Castle, around which thin smoke still rose.

  Before them was the bulk of Mount Arao, rising to the left, and, beyond a forest of cedars, the close-packed forms of Mount Tengu, Mount Hommyoji, Mount Mibuchi, and others. Still farther stood Mount Ishigami, like a guardian lion-dog seen from the rear, its foothills projecting well into the city. Kumamoto was well endowed with greenery. The view from Kimpo afforded more the prospect of dense forest than of human dwellings, and the castle’s Great Tower rose sharply from the midst of clustered trees. There was also a sweeping view of the region of Fujisaki Heights.

  The watchers f
elt as if last night’s battle, erupting at eleven and raging but three hours, and the wretched flight that followed, were being reenacted before them. Once more they were storming about with upraised blades within the camp. Or rather it was ghostly warriors and ghostly flames that now held sway on a field of combat flooded with morning light—of more substance, though, than they, the fugitives on Kimpo, who looked down upon the scene of last night’s combat as though upon an ancient battleground.

  Beyond the city, far to the east, the smoke that poured up from the crater of Mount Aso, merging with the clouds drawn by it, blotted out that whole portion of the sky. It seemed to hang there peacefully, but was changing from moment to moment. Smoke kept rising from the crater to thrust ever upward the smoke that had preceded it, and the swelling clouds drank it in unremittingly.

  The sight of the rising smoke put heart into the watchers, and the will to strike another blow quickened within them.

  Just then some of their comrades returned from a successful forage in the villages below with a cask of saké and rations for the day, and all fell to eating and drinking lustily. Every man felt his vigor returning, whether he had set his mind upon death or yearned to make another assault, and before long a resolution was formed that took into some account their actual circumstances. With Kisou Onimaru urging another assault upon the garrison and Tsunetaro Kobayashi counseling against this, it was finally determined with near-unanimity that a scouting party should first be dispatched to probe the enemy’s strength and disposition.