Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure

by Hideo Furukawa

  Nah. I’ll leave that.

  Young S was driving. Five of us in the car. This was no car being driven by a high-school student on his own, no stolen vehicle. An everything-in-order rental car. License plates from Kashiwa. No music from the speakers. A low hum from the radio in the background, thank god there were no emergency news bulletins. From time to time I would listen more intently, trying not to be caught off guard. I was steeling myself, for if I was going to be startled, it would be on account of one of the nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, something to do with one of those reactor cores.

  I had a camera in hand and was trying to capture it, the landscape out the window. Just wanted one picture that captured the movement out there, with no intentional focal point. But they all turned out too clean. I wondered where we were.

  Had I just said that out loud? He responded: “A mountain, known as Ryōzen.”

  “Is there a town?”

  “Just a mountain. A peak that soars more than 800 meters. You can think of it as a natural boundary between Date City and Sōma City.”

  “That name, Ryōzen: ‘Sacred Mountain,’ then. I assume there is a temple nearby.”

  “You asking about a place for esoteric Buddhist rites?” This time the question came from him. “The way you talk, sounds like that’s what you’re after.”

  “Maybe, perhaps…”

  I had to think about this. Inuzuka Gyūichirō is now addressing me with an informal “you.” Had I called him Gyūichirō?

  “Yep, that’s right, Gyūichirō,” I said again.

  “The Ryōzen temple is a phantom.”

  “How?”

  “It was a mountain fortress. It served as a base for the ousted southern court. Fourteenth century. Then it was burned to the ground. Nothing left these days but foundation stones. No legacy beyond that. No documents. No official historical records, no history at all,” he explained.

  “But what about its being burned down?”

  “You mean the historical record?” Gyūichirō, perhaps grinning now. “Third year of Jōwa, 1347 in the Western calendar. It’s probably recorded somewhere. But ‘Jōwa’ is the reign name and first year of the rival Northern Dynasty. Wonder if it’s OK to use their reign name. Sort of reveals ones politics.”

  “Of course, there would be two different reign names, two different first-year markers.”

  “Well, of course. Two strands from the outset.”

  “And emperors, always two of them?” I asked. But it wasn’t him I was asking. It was a time of two different periods, strands, northern and southern courts, extending.

  Gyūichirō’s gaze was fixed out the window, off into the distance. To that far off distance; all consideration of me and my camera already forgotten.

  “Looks like Date up ahead.”

  “Are we crossing out of the city? Are we leaving Sōma?”

  “Nah,” he responded. “Still a little way.”

  “Until we leave Sōma?” I asked.

  At which point Gyūichirō said, “I had a younger brother. What about you?”

  “None,” I said.

  Is that true? Immediate self-doubt. Maybe in an invisible family, I thought. And then the voice called to me again—“Hideo an-Chan! Older brother.”

  “Is it time for me to tell you about this?” Inuzuka Gyūichirō asked. “I think its time for a story,” he continued.

  “I’ll tell you two stories,” he said then. “One of them is my own very private retelling of the days following my brother’s disappearance. It’s unlikely to be very organized,” he said to me. “Given how chaotic it will be, I don’t expect that you will understand, but I really don’t care,” he continued. “But, first, there’s one thing I need you to understand: my brother and I parted ways in Sōma. There at that convenience store in Sōma. Maybe you know about that already. You may already be aware of the scene at the convenience store where the paths of our lives separated for good.

  “Not that it really matters one way or the other.”

  My brother allowed me to get away. In a way, he left me outside of time. Whether it was outside time, or the story, or whatever, the details are not important. But you, this is something you need to think about: if I had been able to escape outside the story, then it makes perfect sense that I am here now.

  By here, I mean right here beside you, right now, in the cramped back seat of this car. Right now—what year is it anyway?

  2011, April?

  April 5? 6?

  That’s the Western calendar, right? What year is that in the imperial-reign system?

  Heisei 23.

  So Heisei has really come a long way. I was born in Shōwa 52, year of my birth. But I only made it as far as Heisei 15, there, inside of time, inside the story, until the I met the conclusion at that convenience store in Sōma.

  That’s where I lost track of my brother.

  I told you I was going to give you my private version of all of that, about those days following my brother’s disappearance, but it’s pointless. Here’s the thing, “days” don’t exist, you see. You know what I mean? Because I moved outside of time. There at that convenience store, at the point where my brother allowed me to escape time.

  And with that, history felt closer.

  Maybe because time no longer “exists.” Maybe because all of history has come to seem like something compressed, like it’s contained in a swimming pool. But that’s not it, that example doesn’t work either. Because, you know, it’s like I’m able to dive into its depths. That’s how it feels, in fact; this sense that time does not exist while history does.

  OK, OK—looks like I’ll be scolded if I continue being this careless about history.

  Even so, I am going to borrow some of what you know and tell the second of my stories. Forget about my own story for awhile. Way too jumbled. Now this second story, that, of course, is about horses.

  It’s an association one can make from the name of the place, from Sōma, am I right?

  And you have already written about this, haven’t you: “There are horses in the city of Sōma.” Of course there are, it’s right in the name of the place. So of course they’re there.

  So, let’s move on and talk about horses.

  “Let me tell you about horses,” he said to me. “You’re not going to say, ‘Enough of horses already, I’ve heard enough,’ or something else like that, are you? Before getting into the actual story of the horses, maybe I should provide a summary, an outline of horses. We all know horses are domestic livestock; obvious, right? But then, what does that mean?”

  “ ‘Domestic livestock’ are obviously special animals, right?”

  Birds and beasts that are raised and cared for by humans.

  Now, to be precise, to limit ourselves to “birds and beasts,” would be to make a mistake: silkworms are insects and goldfish are fish, but they have also been domesticated. But let’s not be concerned with such details. There are the “five domestic animals” comprising fowl, sheep, cattle, horses, and pigs; there is a group of “six domestic animals” that includes dogs. That broad-brush approach will work for us, right?

  Well, then, within this group of “five domestic animals” or the “group of six,” what is consistent across all of these “special animals”?

  Just saying they are raised by humans won’t cut it. Captured from the wild, raised and acclimated, made domestic: that might make the birds and beasts into pets, but into domestic breeds?

  No, that’s not it. That would not be sufficient for them to develop into breeds.

  Those breeds were devised by humans; that is the essential point. Beyond that there is nothing.

  How about a different expression: “natural selection.” All living beasts are naturally weeded out. Some get to go on living, some do not. That’s what happens. But domestic animals have been naturally selected by humans. Whether a particular variety dies out or flourishes is dependent on the contribution of humans.

  It
’s a contract, you see.

  The animals that have entered into a contract with the humans are the ones that become domestic animals.

  In the Judeo-Christian tradition we humans have entered into a contract with God, and all the domestic animals have been bequeathed to our care. Even if we acknowledge that all living beings have been given life by God, we cannot overlook the fact that, after that, we’ve entered a contract with the animals. Fact is, on account of that, we are now controlling them, whether five varieties or six varieties or however many dozens of varieties of living beings there are.

  So we are the administrators of giving birth and of being born. That’s domestication; that’s the contract.

  We humans continue orchestrating this natural selection, at least to the degree that we continue to raise domestic animals. That’s the contract, continually renewed, between us and the domestic animals.

  You disagree with any of this?

  I didn’t think so.

  From this point on I will divide “domestic livestock” into two groups. It makes things easier that way. Now, why is it that humans needed new breeds of domestic animals? Because one group was for eating and one group was for working. From that list of five varieties, chickens were in the former group. For meat and also for eggs. Sheep were also in the former category, with the added advantage of providing wool. In Japan, cattle were in the latter category. In the fields, they pulled plows; in the cities they were kept in order to provide an engine for carriages. As for meat eating, the idea of using them as a source of animal-based protein, that idea didn’t exist in the public sphere until we started imitating Western civilization in the nineteenth century. Milk was an exception, from the outset, cow’s milk and the products made from it placed them in the former group. Leather, too.

  But what about horses?

  Horses were in the latter category.

  Of course, they served a role similar to that of cows. Useful for farming the land. More technically, to draw loads, as draft horses. The thing that stands out for horses, of course, when compared to cattle, is their ability to be ridden. This has no comparison to cattle, which can only be used as the engines to move carriages; horses are the source of energy, but they are also the conveyance.

  A horse’s value is derived from its being “rideable livestock.”

  But horses have also served as an engine of world history.

  Horses were a driving force of world history, which, of course, encompasses Japanese history, as well.

  Goes without saying. I’m sure you agree.

  And war, too: horses changed the structure of war, both ethnic conflict and state-waged war. We can assume that war existed even before horses; there were wars all throughout the ancient world, but with the appearance of this “rideable livestock,” the nature of war changed dramatically. You can imagine how this worked in the early stages. There were groups and nations that understood horses, that made use of horses, and these “horse-advanced nations” appear in the historical record as victorious in battle and go on to become conquerors. Easy enough to imagine the story line. Horses provided unparalleled military power. They would have been the ultimate weapon in prehistory and, indeed, continued to be so until the advent of firearms. With their speed, the pace of attack changes; it brought an unbelievable maneuverability, especially when bows, which could be employed from horseback, were added to the mix.

  Of course, this is only at the earliest stages; before long, all parties involved with war came to understand horses and to use them.

  In any case, the very structure of war was changed.

  As a result, world history, human history, can be divided into a “before horses” and an “after horses.”

  To the extent of my own knowledge, the oldest traces of horses’ being domesticated are in southern Ukraine. Teeth have been found among the artifacts from the Neolithic period. Horse teeth. Carbon-14 dating estimates that the artifacts and the sites are about 5,000 years old, and probably 500 years older than that.

  Of course, the ancient Egyptians had horses too.

  They were also in the Assyrian city-state.

  And also in Greece and Rome.

  But what were horses to these civilizations? Different from cattle, different from sheep and fowl. Unlike pigs and dogs. These rideable domestic animals, tightly associated at a basic level with war, were, in most civilized societies, the possession of the ruling classes, which is to say, a symbol of ruling and governing. Things were no different in Japan. In the early years after the institution of twelfth-century legal codes, we see the same scenario, namely, the samurai warrior class as rulers in possession of horses.

  Horses and samurai. The image just sort of presents itself, don’t you think?

  But if we are talking about horses in Japan, there are historical vicissitudes. Allow me to explain. There were initially three varieties of horses, all of which have risen and fallen, by turns. That’s too general but still accurate. The three varieties are separated according to size. Small and medium-sized horses, along with the large horses. Now it was not until Japan ended its policy of seclusion that this third variety entered our history. But ever since the Meiji period, and even now, what comes to mind as the standard, stereotypical “horse” is only this third variety. Big as Thoroughbreds, standing as high as 170 centimeters.

  The medium-sized horses stand about 130 centimeters.

  And the small ones don’t quite reach 120 centimeters.

  You can imagine what they must look like. Quite cute, don’t you think?

  They were the very first Japanese horse. The original breed was a horse small in stature. I mean, this is not entirely conclusive. Horse bones have been dug up among Jōmon-period items, so it had long been accepted that there were horses at that time. But scientific measurements of fluoride isotopes overturned that accepted wisdom. A newer explanation is gaining acceptance that no horses were in Japan until the start of the Kofun period, in the early third century. During the Kofun period, which followed the Jōmon and Yayoi periods, it was the medium-sized horses that arrived in Japan; no one disagrees with this. To suggest another theory, it seems likely that one of those “horse-advanced nations” invaded the Japanese archipelago. And that makes it seem likely that present day “Japan” was developed by this same ethnic group or nation-state that already understood, and was raising, horses. I imagine this makes you think of sections in the Kojiki, the Record of Ancient Matters that explains Japan’s origins. Am I right? About the arrival of the emperor to Japan.

  But that, my friend, is not the official history.

  So, suppose that the small horses—ponies—were already “here” during the Jōmon and Yayoi periods. And suppose as well that a culture of horse husbandry was already established in the prehistoric period. And further, the end of that line of small-sized horses remains, as a contemporary breed. They are on the Nansei Islands. A very few head remain in the Yaeyama Islands, in Yonaguni, and in the Tokara Islands, which is Okinawa and Kagoshima Prefectures, according to current geographic delineations. I bet you’re thinking that forcing this into contemporary geographic divisions is a bit heavy-handed. Am I right? Thinking: “Were the Nansei Islands territorial possessions of ‘Japan’ at that time?”

  And then, as you start thinking about the word nansei—south and west—of the Nansei Islands it leads you to an association with the north and east of Tohoku.

  The opposite of Nansei would be Tohoku; southwest and northeast.

  And that, I bet, leads you back to associations with the Kojiki. There, Japan’s main island, Honshū, is given the name “Ōyamato Toyoakizushima,” and the story is told of the island’s founding. But, in fact, that island was understood to refer only to the kinai imperial holdings near Kyoto, so Tohoku was not included in that story. In other words, from the very beginning, the northeastern prefectures of Tohoku were not even considered part of Honshū. I am sure that this has been on your mind as well. And I assume with those peculiar scales of yours
you are calculating the fortune and misfortune that followed from being excluded from those founding myths.

  At any rate, we only know three things for sure. In the land currently occupied by the nation-state of Japan, there are three varieties of horses. Of those, the small and mid-sized horses, the ones that can be considered among the original horses, are in danger of extinction. Whenever we think of “horses,” the image we have of a “horse” is, without fail, even within Japan, always of those large horses.

  There is an easy-to-understand chart compiled in the Meiji period that plots those changes. I will use it to explain this. It says that horses are to be divided into the three following categories: “Japanese breeds,” “mixed breeds,” and “Western breeds.” That third category, the Western breeds, refers to a big horse that simply did not exist before the opening of Japan in the late 1800s. They were imported, imported in waves. Which led to mixed breeds and produced the horse breeds of the second category.

  The mixed breeds were promoted by the Meiji government. Horses were wanted for military purposes, and military horses had to be big and strong. Also, Japan felt it had to develop as a “rich nation, strong army.” And then the horses themselves needed improving, improvement of the breed. And with that, they transformed from “Japanese breeds” to “mixed breeds.” It is not impossible that in the final step they transformed into actual “Western breeds.” Artificial selection allows the creation of a variety, a “domesticated animal.”

  And, in fact, they accomplished this transformation.

  Am I right? The original horses no longer exist.

  Unless you go looking for them; you have to really look to find them.

  You see how Japanese history was commanding the “Japanese breeds” to disappear? Now, it’s not accurate to say that all the descendants died out. Descendants still exist, whether in large numbers or small. And that fact has a direct relationship to the horses of Sōma, to the story I am about to tell. The story of the horses of the Sōma clan and of Sōma City.