Daughter of the Sword: A Novel of the Fated Blades

by Steve Bein

  “You look like a war hero. Besides, some of those guys you work with are cute. You gotta love that uniform.”

  “Not when I have to wear it, I don’t.” Mariko sighed. She’d lost the battle already and she knew it. As a last ploy she said, “Besides, I thought you were hitting on Dr. Hayakawa.”

  “Nothing says a girl can’t work on two guys at once.” Saori winked and smiled. “Come on, Miko, put your face on. Let’s go.”

  Six nights and seven days: that’s how long Mariko had been cooped up in her bed until Hayakawa pronounced her free from the risk of sepsis. And now she didn’t want to leave the apartment. She knew it didn’t make sense, and she knew she’d have to go to her precinct sooner or later if she was going to get HQ to sign off on her six weeks of recuperation. Mariko still couldn’t sit up without pain, two hot stripes of it, one in her belly and the other in her back. Fuchida’s sword had done far worse to her on its way through her body, but it was the muscle punctures that kept her immobile. If she was going to be paid while she sweated through rehab, she’d have to go through the paperwork.

  So as much as she hated Saori for pushing her into it, Mariko got ready to go back to post. “I have no idea what to wear,” she told Saori. “What the hell goes with a wheelchair?”

  It was the thought of being seen in the chair that daunted her. She’d worked long and hard to be seen as an equal—or, if not an equal, then at least as a strong, independent woman who didn’t need to be mollycoddled or rescued. Letting the department see her in a wheelchair would destroy that image, and Mariko feared it would take another four years to rebuild it.

  It was seeing Glorious Victory that cinched it. It hadn’t been in the evidence locker because it wasn’t evidence; no one would be pressing assault charges against a dead man, and without a case against Fuchida it was just Dr. Yamada’s private property. Yamada had bequeathed everything to Shoji-san, and Shoji didn’t have much need for ancient cavalry swords. When Mariko returned to her apartment, she found Saori had bought her a sword stand as a welcome-home present, and for lack of a better place to put it in her minuscule apartment, Glorious Victory Unsought was sitting on Mariko’s kitchen table.

  It was far and away the most expensive, most beautiful, most daunting gift she’d ever received. The sword overhung both ends of the little table, larger than life. Mariko thought of the Bushido tradition it symbolized; she thought of her fallen sensei; she thought of what both of them would have to say about trying to avoid her fears.

  So she rummaged around for some blush and lip gloss. Makeup was hardly her usual style, but she couldn’t show up at the precinct looking like the pallid zombie she’d become after lying flat on her back for a week and surviving on an intravenous diet. In the end she settled on wearing her police uniform. Again, hardly her usual style, but at least she’d be seen as a sergeant in a wheelchair instead of a poor girl in a wheelchair.

  As they approached the station, Saori said, “Don’t look so nervous. It’ll be fine.”

  “They’re guys, Saori. They’re going to pity me.”

  Saori spun her about, pushed the glass door open with her butt, and pulled Mariko inside. The second set of double doors was also made of glass, crosshatched by steel wires within, and Mariko looked over her shoulder to see Ino rushing up to open them for her. It begins before I even get inside, she thought, and Ino’s long arms pulled back the door.

  “Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water?” Saori said. Without even looking, Mariko knew what smile she was giving him.

  But Ino ignored her entirely. “Hey, guys!” he said. “Oshiro’s back!”

  The last thing in the world Mariko expected was applause. Everyone in the precinct was on his feet, cheering and shouting. Ino was the first to clap his hand on her shoulder, just as he might have done for a teammate who drove in the winning run at the interprecinct baseball tournament. As Saori ushered her into the station, one cop after another congratulated her, their smiles genuinely collegial. One gave her a punch to the upper arm and did not pull it. There would be a bruise later. She would treasure it. Sergeant Takeda, not much taller than Mariko even in her wheelchair, took one look at her missing finger and joked that she’d have to learn how to shoot left-handed. It was the kind of joke he should have made only with another man. She adored him for it.

  “You got rid of the old man!” said a cop she didn’t even recognize.

  “Yeah, pled guilty this morning,” said someone else behind her, someone she couldn’t see through the crowd.

  Whoever he was, his comment generated almost as much stir as Mariko’s appearance had. “A guy I know at the courthouse just sent me the e-mail,” the rumormonger said. Mariko still couldn’t tell who it was; all she could see were backs and belts. “They nailed him on obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence. My guy says the prosecutor decided not to push for destruction of evidence. Better to take the easy conviction, I guess.”

  “How long will he get?”

  “Who cares? Just so they put him away long enough for me to retire.”

  “Oshiro, is it true you nailed him in the ’nads with a Taser?”

  “Yeah, Oshiro, is it true when they found him, he pissed himself?”

  Mariko couldn’t keep track of all the chatter. It was enough for her that Ko hadn’t been convicted of turning Beautiful Singer into ferrous ash. Mariko was guilty on that count, and it wasn’t right to let another cop stand punishment for her crime, not even a cop so noxious as Lieutenant Ko. Ex-lieutenant Ko, she thought, who had left his fingerprints all over Beautiful Singer’s sheath, which had probably been sitting right on his jacket when the police arrived to examine the scene. It was his only gentlemanly act: to remove himself from her life permanently.

  “Who do you think burned the sword if it wasn’t him?” someone was saying.

  “It was him. They just couldn’t pin it on him, because they couldn’t find prints on the incinerator.”

  Mariko smiled. She knew why that was: she’d wiped her own prints clean. Even after destroying the sword that had ruined so many lives, she had to watch her ass. Guilt made her face flush, despite the fact that she was the only one who could turn the boys’ gossiping in the right direction.

  And then, all of a sudden, she smiled. It was a broad, beaming smile, accompanied by the beautiful realization that had just leapt into her mind. She was gossiping with the boys. More to the point, the boys were gossiping with her. She was in. One of them. A member of the club.

  And to join, all she’d had to do was die and come back.

  She shuddered at the thought of what it would take to make lieutenant.

  GLOSSARY

  anime: cartoon

  banzai: traditional military cheer

  bokken: solid wooden training sword, usually made of oak

  bōryokudan: literally, “violent crime organization”; the term used by police, and in the media at the behest of the police, for organized crime syndicates in Japan

  bushi: warrior; soldier

  Bushido: the way of the warrior

  daimyo: feudal lord with large land holdings

  dan: an enumerating suffix for ranks of black belt (e.g., “fourth dan” means “fourth-degree black belt”)

  eta: outcast; untouchable

  gaijin: literally, “outsider”; foreigner

  gakubatsu: a strong and lasting bond, originating from a shared alma mater, entailing the exchange of favors

  geisha: a skilled artist paid to wait on, entertain, and in some cases provide sexual services for clientele

  goze: blind itinerant female, usually a musician, said to have the gift of second sight

  gyoza: Japanese pot sticker, usually filled with ground pork and shredded cabbage, onion, and other vegetables

  hachimaki: the bandana traditionally worn under an armored warrior’s helmet; also used by kamikaze pilots to signify their willingness to die

  hakama: wide, pleated pants bound tightly around the waist and hangi
ng to the ankle

  iaidō: the art of drawing and resheathing the sword, and of attacking off the draw

  kappa: a water-dwelling mythological being, humanoid with reptilian features, with a topless head and a water-filled bowl in place of a brain

  karōshi: death from overwork; also known clinically as “occupational sudden death”

  katana: a curved long sword worn with the cutting edge facing upward

  kendō: the sporting art of the sword

  kenjutsu: the lethal art of the sword

  koku: the amount of rice required to feed one person for one year; also, a unit for measuring the size of a fiefdom or estate, corresponding to the amount of rice its land can produce

  kumihimo: woven cord, sometimes used to bind swords

  manga: Japanese-style comic books

  naginata: pole arm with a very long blade

  ninkyō dantai: literally, “chivalrous group”; the term used by criminals for organized crime syndicates in Japan

  NPA: National Police Agency

  ōdachi: a curved great sword

  onsen: hot spring bath

  okonomiyaki: literally, “grilled whatever-you-like”; an omelette-like dish consisting of various meats and vegetables, shredded and bound together by batter, often cooked by the customer (okonomiyaki restaurants usually feature griddles on each table)

  OL: office lady; general term for any woman in pink-collar work

  oyabun: head of an organized crime syndicate

  pachinko: a machine used for gambling, akin to a vertical pinball machine

  punch perm: a hairstyle of short, tight curls, often dyed, which for many years was a trademark style among yakuzas

  ri: a unit of measurement equal to about two and a half miles

  rikishi: sumo wrestler

  romaji: the roman alphabet when used to write Japanese words

  rōnin: literally, “wave-person”; a masterless samurai

  sarariman: salaryman; a typical large-office employee

  sashiko: a traditional Japanese quilting art

  sensei: literally, “born-before”; a teacher, professor, or doctor, depending on the context

  seppuku: ritual suicide by disembowelment; also called hara-kiri

  shakuhachi: traditional Japanese flute

  shamisen: traditional Japanese lute

  shinobi: literally, “magic person” or “secret person”; a ninja

  shinogi-ji: the flat of a katana or tachi

  shinogi-zukuri: a style of sword featuring a flat of the blade, so that the blade looks roughly bullet-shaped in cross section

  shōchū: rice liquor

  shodan: literally, “beginner’s rank”; first-degree black belt

  shogun: commander in chief; historically, the true ruler of Japan (the emperor being merely the shogun’s most important hostage)

  shoji: sliding divider with rice paper windows, usable as both door and wall

  shomen: an overhead strike

  shoyu: soy sauce

  southern barbarian: white person (considered “southern” because European sailors were first allowed to dock only in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s major islands)

  sugegasa: broad-brimmed, umbrella-like hat

  tachi: a curved long sword worn with the blade facing downward

  taiko: a Japanese-style (and often enormous) drum; alternatively, the art of drumming with said drums

  tsuba: a hand protector, usually round or square, where the hilt of a sword meets its blade; the Japanese analogue to a crossguard

  wakaru: to understand

  wakashū: a low-ranking yakuza

  wakizashi: a curved short sword, typically paired with a katana, worn with the blade facing upward

  washi: traditional Japanese handmade paper

  yakuza: member of an organized crime syndicate

  zabuton: a broad cushion used for sitting on the floor

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There is a scene in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring that got the attention of some vociferous critics with a lot of time on their hands. The four hobbits sit around their campfire on Amon Sûl cooking a dinner of tomatoes, sausages, and nice, crispy bacon. The critics complained that tomatoes are a New World food, and that it is therefore unrealistic for hobbits to be eating them. This sort of complaint tickles me. Four hobbits travel in the company of a ranger still in the prime of life at eighty-seven years old, they search for a wizard on a hill with an Elvish name, they are soon to be attacked by deathless wraiths, and what’s unrealistic about this scene is that they’re eating tomatoes.

  Some readers may find errors in this book that are more substantial than hobbit tomatoes. My background is primarily in philosophy, not history, and so I take certain risks in writing historical fiction. I’ve never been a police officer either, so I take further risks in choosing Mariko as a protagonist. That’s all right with me; to crib from Socrates, the risk-free life is not worth living. If readers do find anachronisms and inaccuracies in this book, I expect I’ll be seeing some e-mail. Please send it. I look forward to learning from experts about police procedures and Japanese history, and if I build a collection of hobbit tomatoes in the process, so much the better. I promise to do something fun with them.

  My editor tells me that the rest of my readers—those who aren’t police officers, Japanese historians, or the sort to go looking for hobbit tomatoes to sling—may be curious to know which parts of the book are historically accurate and which are my own invention. Master Inazuma himself is fictitious, but the other details regarding the forging of swords are as accurate as I know how to make them: Muramasa and Masamune are real historical figures; the sword smiths of Seki were (and are) Shinto priests, and Seki was (and is) the sword smithing capital of Japan; virtually identical swords were classified as tachi in one era and katana in another, and were classified differently based on how they were worn.

  Perhaps most important for purposes of this book, it was not uncommon to give a sword a name, especially if something remarkable was accomplished with that weapon, and neither was it uncommon to describe a sword as having a certain personality. Japanese culture is at bottom a culture thoroughly infused by Shinto, and central to Shinto beliefs is the idea that kami—mistranslated as “gods,” poorly translated as “spirits,” and best left untranslated at all—reside in living and unliving things alike. Waterfalls have kami as surely as foxes do, and on this view there is no reason a sword should not be able to have its kami.

  All of the historical periods in this book are accurately named and dated, and though the names of the characters and their families are invented, the details surrounding their lives are again as historically accurate as I know how to make them. Samurai boys like Daigoro did come of age at sixteen (though some families chose other birthdays to celebrate coming-of-age). Women like Hisami were samurai, and they did have their own schools of weapon training, including training with hairpin blades. The transfer of Saito’s loyalty from Lord Kanayama to Lord Ashikaga was possible, and the alternatives—seppuku or becoming rōnin—were grim.

  I also sought to make regional politics faithfully mirror historical fact. The Owari territory of Book Two was hotly contested throughout the most turbulent parts of Japan’s history. The Izu peninsula in Books Four and Six had five dominant clans, the heads of which were called Izu-no-kami (Lord Protectors of Izu). I have renamed the Izu families, but a clan like House Okuma would have commanded the fealty of smaller clans like House Yasuda. Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a real historical figure, and his power was such that not even a regionally dominant clan like the Okumas could afford to ignore his wishes.

  Incidentally, Okuma Ichirō’s neck wound is also true to life, as is Ashikaga Jinzaemon’s. Lord Ashikaga’s was inspired by an acquaintance of my grandfather’s who was shot in the throat; his gravelly voice stands out in my memory, as does his scar like a satellite view of a hurricane. Ichirō’s wound is borrowed from an account in the Hagakure, as is his
treatment. Despite the seeming impossibility of surviving such a grievous wound given such limited knowledge of medicine, the victim in the Hagakure lived to fight another day. That someone in that era could survive being nearly beheaded was too tempting for me to pass up.

  As soon as I discovered that part of the story of the Inazuma blades would have to take place in World War II, I scoured the histories looking for the ideal moment. Two events stood out to frame that moment. The first was the unexpected American surrender near Luzon on April 9, 1942. The second came just nine days later: the only American air raid to strike Japan in 1942, known today as the Doolittle Raid (named for the architect of the attack, not for the fact that the attack didn’t do much).

  Colonel Iwasaki is fictitious, but the crimes I have him commit in the Rape of Nanjing and the Bataan Death March are all too real. Keiji Kiyama and General Matsumori are invented, but the events of World War II in which they are involved are actual events. Disease did cause seventy-five thousand Americans and Filipinos to surrender much earlier than anticipated; that the Japanese were caught unprepared almost certainly contributed to the atrocities that followed in Bataan. Japanese soldiers did take Tulagi, the Solomons, and Guadalcanal, and after the American counterinvasion the fighting on Guadalcanal was as bloody and vicious as any you can imagine. Whether or not all the island-hopping was orchestrated from a single building in Tokyo, and whether or not any intelligence officers from that building were demoted and shipped off to fight in Guadalcanal, are questions I took liberties in answering.

  Executive Order 9066 is not a fiction; Japanese Americans were rounded up and concentrated in internment camps, and if comparing those to the concentration camps of Hitler and Stalin seems unfair to you, I hope you will grant that it might not have seemed that way from the perspective of a young Japanese officer of that era. In the course of Tiger on the Mountain’s story I make brief mention of anti-American propaganda; this too was real and would no doubt fuel the fears of someone in Kiyama Keiji’s position.

  Yamada Yasuo is based in part on my sensei and mentor, Dr. Yuasa Yasuo. Yuasa-sensei was a philosophical mentor for me, not a martial one, but like Yamada, he did fight in World War II. (Yuasa-sensei’s career in the war was worthy of Vonnegut and reminiscent of Heller: he was a combat engineer, and he told me that by the end of the war he was rebuilding the same bridge every night, which American bombers would blow up again the following day.) Like Yamada, Yuasa-sensei was nearly blind. Like Yamada, he published voluminously. On that note I will confess to stealing one of Yamada’s wisecracks directly from Yuasa-sensei, who once told me his publisher might at least have the good graces to wait until he was dead before calling his complete works complete. Like Yamada, he exhibited extraordinary generosity, always willing to share his wisdom. The one respect in which they are not at all alike is that, to the best of my knowledge, Yuasa-sensei was never a total badass with a sword.