Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure

by Hideo Furukawa

  But before I get into that, I have one more story to tell. I have to tell this story in a way that you will not be able to forget or in a way that none of us will be misled. You ready for this? All those historical dramas that claim to be factual? Don’t believe ’em. All those grand battle scenes from the movies, those dramas with the bushō military leaders? Don’t believe a word.

  Nothing but lies.

  The horses that appear in them are all wrong.

  You know why, right? Those big horses didn’t exist back then. Nonetheless, all the samurai we see in the movies are saddled to the backs of Thoroughbred race horses, or regular Thoroughbreds, and sent out into the battlefield.

  The scale of those horses? Fabrication, total fabrication. Entirely made up. And with all that, there is not a single consumer to be found who thinks otherwise.

  So, let’s move to stories about the horses of Sōma. There are actually two stories here, but I sense that they are going to flow together into a single tale. One of those stories is, obviously, my story. The tale in which I cross outside of time.

  Those were his words to me: “Let me tell a story of Sōma horses. To do so, I must tell you about the Sōma clan’s founding patriarch, who became the head of the Sōma clan and domains during the Edo period. Now, don’t come back to me with any of that ‘Sōma domain? I don’t get that’ stuff. Whatever; it is essential to get hold of a summary, an outline of the Sōma clan. OK with you if I provide a simple overview?”

  He continued: The Sōma clan was one of the most solidly established old families of “Japan.”

  In fact, the Sōma clan had administered the same stretch of land in the Hamadōri section of Fukushima from the Kamakura period right up to the fourth year of Meiji, which, calculated by the Western calendar, stretches from the twelfth century up to 1871. An unbroken rule. They suffered none of the territorial shakeups meted out by the bakufu government. This is extremely rare in the annals of Japanese history. They lasted right up until 1871, when the fiefs were abolished and the prefectures established.

  For nearly 700 years the Sōma clan were based in Sōma.

  Before that they were in Shimousa. That’s Chiba Prefecture on a contemporary map. The Sōma clan constituted one of the main branches of the Kantō-based Chiba clan. In 1323 by the Western calendar—Genkō 3 (元亨 3)—they moved their base of operations to Ōshū, which constituted most of contemporary Tohoku. That’s the usual story. Another version has them moving in Genkō 3 (元弘 3)—same sound but a different reign name. That would be 1333.

  And that’s the year that the Kamakura bakufu government collapsed.

  But what matters more than reign name or era, which is to say, more than the time frame, is the space—from the horses’ perspective, I mean. What matters is less the 1323 or 1333 than the migration from the aforementioned Chiba to Fukushima. For the horses of the Sōma clan, this is the big migration. These were military horses. The symbol of the samurai.

  So there was a huge migration.

  And then the horses were, from time to time, dispatched on military activities. There was Ashikaga Takauji, who raised an army, which the Sōma clan joined forces with, to do battle with Kitabatake Akiie, who was the commander of defense for the Mutsu domain. And this Ashikaga Takauji, he was the one who became the first shōgun of the Muromachi bakufu. That’s when Japanese history encounters the turmoil of the Nanboku era, the split of the North and South Dynasties. Which is when “Japan” gets embroiled in, is engrossed in, disturbances and upheavals. And that’s when the daimyō of the Warring States period appear.

  And the Sōma clan was among them.

  So from time to time they were dispatched on military activities. Actually, let’s proceed from the horses’ point of view. In the fifty years starting from 1540—in reign names, that is, from Tenbun 5 until Tenshō 18—there were movements and military excursions but none that qualify as a migration. At any rate, the long-standing foe of the Sōma was the Date clan, right next door. In that fifty-year period they engaged in battle a total of thirty times. The horses undertook numerous short trips to the borders of the clan lands, sometimes midrange trips, and then battle.

  These were real battles, on a grand scale.

  And then, death on the battlefield, or if not death then a return to produce offspring, or even if not dead but at times weaving through the battlefield with the corpses of the fallen “riders” still on their backs. The back-and-forth of these battles are etched in their memories.

  Awful memories. These don’t disappear in a single generation; erasure is impossible.

  Then in Tenshō 18, which is 1590 in the Western calendar, following a substantial passage of time, another migration. This time, Date Masamune, the leader of what had been the long-standing enemy clan, is now an ally. And together they joined Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s famous siege of Odawara Castle. The Sōma horses were all dispatched from Fukushima Prefecture to distant Kanagawa Prefecture. Some of them died there; some of them remained to live on in that region, with all of these awful experiences etched into their memories. Now, they were not dispatched all the way to the decisive battle at Sekigahara. They did not make the long migration to Sekigahara, in what is now Gifu Prefecture, in Keichō 5, which is 1600, and that earned them the displeasure of Tokugawa Ieyasu and brought substantial grief. To the Sōma leader, that is. But somehow or other the Sōma fief was established, and then Osaka Castle fell, which meant the downfall of the Toyotomi dynasty and the rise to power of the Tokugawa, and from that point on the horses were in Sōma.

  They were in the Sōma region, under the jurisdiction of the Sōma clan.

  They did not deploy. There were no deployments.

  Three more things I want to add. Throughout all of this the Sōma clan continued the religious festival that is the Nomaoi. This is the festival that is now designated, by the nation, by this nation of “Japan,” as an “Important Intangible Folk Cultural Asset.” A sacred display of martial arts that, even in a peaceful age, takes the Date clan as the hypothetical enemy. That’s surely how it was early in the Edo period. It was military training, a grand-scale military exercise. Hundreds of wild horses were used, and they became known as “sacred horses”; this is how the horses of Sōma could continue to live on, without their bloodline dying out. They were able to live through the 200-plus years of the Edo period.

  But it’s not like they could always enjoy the peace and tranquility of not being deployed. This is my second point. In Hōreki 5 and 6, which in the Western calendar is 1755–56, there was a famine, from which people died, and horses died, too. In Meiwa 6 and 7, which is 1769–70, a horrendous epidemic raged in the vicinity of Nakamura Castle, and the horses surely suffered from it as well. Then in Tenmei 3 and 4 there was an extreme famine, a tragedy that extended across the years 1783–84 and left more than 8,500 people of the Sōma fiefdom dead in its wake. The horses starved in greater numbers than the humans. Memories of that famine persist. Memories that can only be described as agonizing.

  There was starvation, yes, but for the first time the horses became part of the category of “animals domesticated for food use.”

  Which, for the horses of Sōma, brought such frightening memories.

  Anyway, I just mentioned the Nakamura Castle, without any explanation. You caught that, right? So, for my third point, I want to explain about the castle where the Sōma clan was based and the process that got them there. They started at Odaka Castle. Then in Keichō 2 they moved to Ushigoe Castle (with a name that looks like “cattle crossing”). In Keichō 8 they moved back to Odaka Castle, but in Keichō 16—which is 1611 if you work it out in the Western calendar—the Nakamura Castle was constructed. It was also called Baryō Castle (and that name means something like “horse hill”). This served as the main castle headquarters for the Sōma clan the entire time. Right up until the disappearance of the Sōma fief. The vicissitudes of this castle’s history, its history of construction, affects me somehow.

  What about you?<
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  Now at the time, the Sōma fief lands only went as far as Ōkumamachi. Where we are, right now, is the southernmost tip of the Sōma clan lands. Here we are, in Ōkumamachi; what’s there now?

  Indeed. I wonder what is built there now.

  Try starting in the twentieth century, or think of the Shōwa period: what kind of castle-building history do you find?

  Now, I’m betting you have an answer to this one: nuclear power plants. There was a test run of the plant in November 1970, Shōwa 45. That would be the first of the nuclear reactors built in Fukushima. Precise name: Power Plant Number One. And I imagine you will take over from there, explaining, “the castle construction continued from there.” Perhaps I should now vacate the stage. Can I look to you to take over the story from here?

  That’s what he said. He, this Inuzuka Gyūichirō.

  We will take a break from the story here.

  Our car with the Kashiwa license plates continued to make its way, its movement small in comparison. Small? Really?

  Here I am writing this manuscript. Composing this essay. I must now return to the current date and time. Today is May 12. Which brings me up, with a start, to the facts, to the reality, to the actuality: we are now past May 11.

  That places us two months out from March 11. Even so, yesterday I saw hardly any news item of importance. A single month ago, on April 11, there were numerous special editions focused on “Events in the one month since March 11.” And then it was on that day that I began this essay. I have now entered my second month of writing this. I have already filled more than 150 manuscript pages, no real surprise in that. I may be going a bit too fast.

  But I have to wonder. Given that no major news outlets have produced investigative news stories on “Two months after the triple disasters,” is my pace really too fast? To me it feels much too slow. I need to push back against the general lack of interest. I need to be inscribe this, record this. I am writing these paragraphs. Here I am, writing this manuscript.

  But there is one more reason for my surprise at these facts, this situation. The turnover of the months took me by surprise. May? Was it already May? I have no recollection of encountering the end of April. Thus the fact of, the reality of, the twelfth of May, shocked the hell out of me.

  This probably sounds ridiculous, but there is a reason for this sense of delusion. The fact of the matter is that I did not experience the end of Japan’s April. Never knew the end of April in Japan. I took off from Narita on the morning of April 30, which was April 29 Eastern Standard Time, and spent the intervening hours on a plane, and got off the plane in New York some thirteen hours later, which is to say, on the morning of April 30.

  This is not about straddling two time periods. That was not my sense of things. Rather, it was about what can be contained in one calendar day, two calendar days; they stretch out, fill out; one or two days of the week can be contained in it; that kind of change. It expands, it contracts. Somewhere in that experience of time the end of Japan’s April disappeared with a whoosh and a pop. Nothing I could do about it. But there in New York I did experience the night of April 30, the transition from midnight to the first moments of May 1.

  By simply writing all this, by thinking about this, it came to me that this “my Japan’s April” was, in its own way, a sort of being spirited-away. Yet I need to resist this phenomenon, this sense of loss. I will record and inscribe the memory that is still fresh in my mind, with this paragraph, these words. I will make it a solid memory that even I cannot alter later. I am watching two important news stories about the events of April 22 and the day before, the 21st. I am deeply touched by this human voice I hear on the TV, by the physical body that speaks those emotions, by the living flesh and blood contained in that voice, precisely because it came through the TV. The first of these images on the news was the appearance of the Fukushima Prefecture governor. He was in the prefectural government offices. The president of Tokyo Electric Company had come for a personal meeting to offer an “Apology for the Nuclear Accident.” To which the governor responded, “The children of Fukushima,” he was saying, “on account of the leakage of radioactive material,” he continued, “I remind you that more than six thousand of them have no other option but to be evacuated outside the prefecture. They have been separated from the place where they should be.” In these moments it was clear, given how the mayor’s voice quivered with sadness and pain, that he was crying, although no tears fell. These were tears that did not fall. And then the governor of Fukushima Prefecture, outfitted in work coveralls, continued resolutely. He went on to confront the president of Tokyo Electric Company: “None of these nuclear power plants, neither the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant nor the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant, can ever be permitted to restart.” Tears were rolling down my face.

  The second of these images is of a person whose name is unknown to me. This man had been moved to the Tamura city evacuation site. He shouted at the prime minister—the prime minister of the nation of Japan, the head of the cabinet government—on his first visit to observe the evacuation centers in Fukushima Prefecture. The prime minister had already turned to leave after a mere ten-minute visit to the site when the man yelled after him: “What, you’re leaving already?” His voice was clear and calm, as though designed to carry through the evacuation center. After a space of some seconds, he spoke again. “Are you really going to leave already?” My guess is that he was evacuated from Katsuraomura. But it was that human voice that effected a change in the prime minister’s activities, now and into the future.

  Then there is the news item that did not come through the television channels. Something I learned from the newspapers. It was announced on April 25 that twenty-eight elementary and preschools within the Kōriyama city limits would have the surfaces of their open schoolyards removed. They were going to remove of the top layer of soil on the playgrounds because they had become repositories of radioactive material. Although I didn’t hear about this through newspaper reports, I later learned that heavy machinery also entered the grounds of the elementary school where I had spent six years. I imagined what it must look like. A bulldozer is scraping the open spaces of my school. Layer upon layer.

  Once in America, the dates on the calendar gave me a jolt.

  I am not talking about jet lag. Nor am I returning to that earlier discussion I had about what is contained in calendar days expanding and changing. I oppose calling this current catastrophe of Japan, officially known as the Great East Japan Earthquake, “3.11.” This because the nuclear accident is ongoing, even after. Indeed, things got much worse after March 11. I know that people desire commemorative phrases, I get that.

  But 3.11: exactly half a year later, on the other side of the world, I encountered its memorial twin: 9/11. Furthermore, America’s preeminent symbol for September 11, 2001, is located in New York, home to the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a place that no longer is.

  I am going to have to go see it, this place that has come to be called “Ground Zero.” Have to. Here I am, a Japanese novelist born in this place called “Fukushima,” now in New York City.

  That’s how it is. Although I had planned on no such thing. This trip to the U.S. had been decided last year (2010) already. At that point Japan did not yet own this 3.11 memorial number. I had been invited by Shibata Motoyuki, the scholar and translator of American literature. He is the editor of the English-language version of the literary journal called Monkey Business, which was scheduled to appear in April of the next year, which is to say, this spring. Since I had a piece appearing in the volume, he asked me if I would be interested in joining an event for the U.S. release. Obviously, I jumped at the chance. I thought it would be fun and exciting. He said he should be able to get appearances for me at a number of associated events.

  This was all before 3.11.

  Before 99 percent of Americans knew that a place called “Fukushima” even existed.

  And then the event occurred in the after
noon of March 11, Japan time, and Japan came to own 3.11. I need to consider this more carefully. I figured that our entire trip would be canceled. I thought the events associated with Monkey Business’s English publication would never occur. I imagined a number of preliminary problems. For example, some international pilots, in the days following 3.11, refused to fly to Japan. A considerable number of countries advised their populations to “refrain from travel to Japan.” “Sakoku,” I thought—just like that old period of national isolation when Japan’s borders were closed to the outside world. Radioactive pollution, I thought, is going to drag us back into a period of isolation not seen since the Edo period 150 years ago. That is, a situation where Japanese people leaving their own country and entering another would be met with the stiffest refusal and turned away. I was thinking: should there be one or two more unexpected mishaps at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, we Japanese ourselves would be handled as radioactive material.

  I could conceive of cases where external radiation, as well as internal radiation, were misdiagnosed as communicable diseases.

  I could see it, at the security gates at airports around the world, the establishment of special screening stations for “Japanese only.”

  At the end of March and into the beginning of April I was truly gripped by this fear, this worst-case scenario. In which case, travel to New York would be impossible. But I had misjudged. The information, both domestic and international—including my own understanding of events—was changing weekly during the month of April. Speaking for myself, while I was able to avoid such extreme anxiety, things at Fukushima Daiichi—from reactors number one through four, the spent nuclear fuel, the storage pools—unfolded in a similar process. Even so, we were being told, however provisionally, that safety had been “restored.”

  The flight to America went without a hitch. On April 30, New York time, things were going as planned. Just one thing that disrupted the schedule: I had become, and was now, a “Fukushima” author in the post-3.11 world. That was an unexpected title. I was to appear at a bookstore in Brooklyn and also at an event in Manhattan (in the building that houses the main offices of the Japan Society). A conversation with Japanese and American authors had also been scheduled for the afternoon of April 30, the day of my arrival. The writer Kawakami Hiromi as well as the haiku master Ozawa Minoru were to appear. Of the many contributors to Monkey Business, we three had traveled to New York to promote it. Kawakami and Ozawa had traveled on the same flight as Shibata Motoyuki and had arrived two days earlier. I was supposed to meet the other two writers, for the first time, at the venue, but the impossible happened: we encountered each other on Lexington Avenue. I was heading south, Kawakami and the others were heading north. I think this chance encounter was indicative of the richness of our time in New York, the days of positive encounters and weighty, fecund depths. I spoke for a minute with the novelist Rebecca Brown, whom I had met in Japan before. I also spoke to the poet Joshua Beckman and was moved by the sense of his being born to create poetry. The interviewer at the Japan Society was Steve Erickson, who was just as I imagined he would be. He’s the sort of person that turns out to be exactly what you would expect from his writings. The first time I met him, he had on a shirt with a print of Bob Dylan. The second time, one of Miles Davis.