Lotus & Other Tales of Medieval Japan

by Takeshi Umehara

  Not wishing to lay themselves open to the charge of being "persons who don't understand about Art," the Steward and his secretary had to hold their tongues.

  Nevertheless, the Steward was in fact quite proud of this iron pillar of his. When he had guests, he enjoyed explaining to them how it had come to be made. The guests always had a rather strained expression as they said things like, "Well, it certainly is an elegant piece. ... In its massiveness, its quiet radiance, its.... Why, it's just like you yourself, Lord Steward!"

  This was the way most visitors responded to the pillar; the Steward's wife, however, had a slightly different reaction. She was five years older than her husband, the daughter of a local official. For a stranger like the Steward to really establish himself in Bizen, it was essential to marry a local girl. And so he had wed her, and she proved to be a very quiet, indeed virtually silent, wife. She being older, he took several young concubines; and she never uttered a word of complaint so long as he showed due respect for her position. The Steward took his wife for granted, like the air he breathed, and devoted himself to his official duties, and to his love affairs.

  She was, then, a fine wife for the Steward; but when she saw the iron pillar, a gleam came into her eyes as she said, "I feel some mysterious power in this pillar...." It was in early May that the pillar entered their household. About two months later, on a hot summer's day, the wife suddenly asked if she could borrow it. She sweated easily, and, though summer had hardly begun, the heat was already overwhelming. The Steward himself had begun to wonder uneasily how his perspiration-prone wife would manage to get through this hot season.

  "Lend me the pillar for a while. Its cool metal surface will be perfect for fending off this heat. You know how I perspire, so take pity on your poor wife and lend it to me." There was a note of resentment in the way she spoke, resentment at her husband's unbridled passion for his young concubines.

  But after all, what difference could it make to the Steward whether the iron pillar stood in his room or his wife's? Far safer, then, to let his wife have the thing than to give her additional cause for complaint. So the iron pillar was duly shifted from his room to hers, and the Steward completely forgot about them both. Occasionally, on an unbearably hot afternoon, he would look in on his wife and find her dozing, propped up against the pillar's cool surface. She was a fastidious woman, and there was nothing unseemly about the way she took her nap. Yet, seeing her there leaning up against the pillar as she slept, the Steward, who had not approached her as his wife for a very long time, felt a sudden erotic urge. "Well, why not, once in a while?" he said to himself as, urged on by lust, he began his approach.

  "Just what do you think you're doing? And in broad daylight too! You haven't paid any attention to me for five years, and I don't want it now!" The wife was adamant in her refusal.

  In truth, it had been five years since the Steward had stopped having relations with his wife. When his passion for his concubines was at its height, she had stubbornly refused all approaches on his part. Having been rebuffed, the Steward decided there was no point in trying to force himself on a woman whose favors were no longer as fresh and intriguing as they had once been. And so physical relations between husband and wife had ended; but apart from that they lived together as before.

  It had been a long time, then, since the Steward felt any erotic stirrings toward his wife. But as the hot summer came to an end and the autumn winds began to send a chill through the body, something strange happened. The wife started to show signs of pregnancy At first the husband thought he must be mistaken, but as the wife's figure grew fuller and fuller, the fact of her pregnancy became clear to everyone. In the midst of the general rejoicing and congratulations, the husband alone knew that he had not touched his wife for a very long time. He went to her room and rebuked her, demanding to know what was going on.

  "My, my. Do you imagine I've given myself to another man, perhaps? Well, I haven't; not even once. I'm not sure myself how this happend, but it may be the work of that iron pillar of yours."

  "The iron pillar? Do you mean to tell me that that iron pillar could father a child?" The Steward spoke reproachfully, but he knew that she was not the sort of woman who would betray him with another man out of spite. Just to be sure, he questioned her attendants closely about the possible presence of any man, and learned that no other males had been anywhere near his wife's chambers—not only no other man, but not even dogs or tomcats. There are things beyond our understanding, he reflected, and waited for the birth of the child. When the day came, his wife delivered herself of a perfectly round ball of iron.

  To the Steward, who had come running at the news that his wife's time had come, she gave the brightest of smiles, saying, "You see, it's just as I said. Now you know that I am a chaste wife who has never given herself to any man but you. This iron ball is the child I saw in my dreams."

  The husband picked up this dream child and found it to be a splendid little ball of iron giving off the same dull radiance as the iron pillar made by the master swordsmith. Perhaps it really had been fathered by the pillar, he thought, feeling a slight pang of jealousy at his wife's infidelity, albeit in her dreams.

  "You've given birth to a wonderful child! I'm going to make a fine warrior out of it. I'll turn this ball of iron into a sword. After all, the man who made this child's father is a famous swordsmith, so I shall have a splendid sword made from it." This idea, like his earlier one of making an iron pillar, had flashed through his mind as soon as he saw the iron ball. The swordsmith was summoned at once and the Steward, showing him the iron ball, told him to make a sword from it. Naturally, he did not tell the swordsmith how the iron ball had come into his possession, nor was the swordsmith so foolish as to ask. But he must have known at a glance that it had a strong connection with the iron pillar that he had made. At any rate, the swordsmith replied in a perfectly natural manner: "This ball is made of very good iron, so good one would rarely come across it. Given material like this, I must make a really fine sword of it. I look forward to seeing what kind of weapon I can produce. I'm sure it will be the best I've ever made." And with this, he carefully wrapped the iron ball in a carrying-cloth and took it home.

  About a year passed. According to the secretary, the swordsmith had remained shut up at home, performing ritual ablutions and working on the sword. When the Steward mentioned this to his wife, she remarked, "My lovely child is going to be a brave warrior. It'll take two or three years, surely." But it didn't. After a little more than a year had passed, the swordsmith appeared at the Steward's residence with the newly crafted sword. Looking forward to seeing what kind of splendid sword had resulted, the Steward began to draw it from its sheath, when the swordsmith stopped him.

  "I've been a swordsmith for a long time, but I've never experienced anything as strange as when I made this sword. There were several odd things that happened, but the gods and buddhas must have given their aid to allow me to create this best of all swords. A sword is for slashing people, but this sword does not depend on the swordsman's power to do the slashing. It does it by itself. Bring something close to this sword, and that object will be split in two. Therefore, when you unsheathe it, please be careful to hold it as far from your neck as possible as you examine it."

  The Steward thought the swordsmith must be exaggerating; but even so, he kept it far from his neck as he drew it from its sheath. It was truly a wondrous sword! The blade had a mirror-like polish, and the tip was so sharp it seemed almost a living thing. He was about to take a closer look when the swordsmith broke in. "Careful, careful! It's dangerous to bring it close to your body. Your head will be drawn toward the blade and chopped right off!" To prove his point, he brought a sheet of paper close to the blade; it was pulled in and cut in two.

  "Heavens!" cried the Steward and the secretary, barely able to speak for amazement.

  "There is another strange thing about this sword," the swordsmith continued. "You see how your face is reflected in the blade, my
lord? Well, it's your real feelings that are being reflected. Even if you're smiling outwardly, if inside you are angry, then the blade will show an angry face. And if you look very angry but are actually laughing inside, the blade will show a laughing face."

  The Steward looked at his face reflected in the blade and saw pure terror.

  "You are very frightened right now, my lord, but there is no need for that."

  The man is making a fool of me, thought the Steward for a moment; but the more he examined the sword, the more convinced he was of its unique quality. As for the swordsmith's rather rude remark, well, fine craftsmen like him often tended to be eccentrics. Bearing that in mind, he would forgive his rudeness just this once. And how happy he was to have gained this best of all swords from the old iron that emerged from the tumulus.

  Early next year, he would be given audience by the Lord Regent in Kamakura. He would show him this sword and repeat what the swordsmith had said just now: how amazed the Regent would be! Having aroused his wonder, the Steward would satisfy it by presenting the sword to His Lordship, and thus ensure his own future prospects. A sly smile spread over the Stewards face. From that day, the precious sword was placed in a box which was to be kept in his own bedchamber.

  In the middle of the night on the third day, the Steward suddenly awakened to the sound of someone weeping. It seemed to come from the depths of the earth, this brokenhearted sobbing. It continued for a while, then broke off, then resumed again. At first he thought he was hearing things; but no, it was certainly a human voice. He woke up the young concubine sleeping by his side. "I hear someone crying." The girl opened her eyes sleepily and listened for a while. "It's nothing. You're hearing things," she said, and dropped off again, snoring. The Steward, though, couldn't sleep. Someone was definitely crying—the sound of a man sobbing reached him fragmentarily. He woke the girl up again. "I tell you there is someone crying. Listen." But when the concubine was listening, the voice stopped." You've been dreaming." She went to sleep again, quite unhappy at having been wakened a second time. The Steward lay awake till morning, worrying about that voice.

  The next night the same thing happened. This time the Steward listened hard and tried to find the place where the voice was coming from. At first it seemed to be coming from far underground and was very hard to trace. But then he decided it was coming from the box in which the wondrous sword was placed. As he approached the box, the sound of crying became a little clearer, and as he moved away, it became fainter. Could the sword itself be crying?

  Next morning he summoned his secretary and discussed the matter. Having heard his master's account, the secretary replied at once: "There are numerous accounts of swords making sounds in the Chinese classics. It is said that a sword made by the noted master Wang Hsin at the command of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty wept loudly night after night. Then there was the monk Fa Lien of the Eastern Ch'in. A certain sword kept in the king's storehouse would often cry, until Fa Lien pacified its spirit and made it stop. In either case, the sword was crying because it missed another sword. There were originally a pair of swords, you see, male and female. When separated, they cry out of longing for one another, but the male cries more intensely.

  "You said that it sounded like a male voice; and I am sure that this is the male of the pair, weeping and yearning for its mate, just as the stag cries for the doe. You recall, I'm sure, the poem about the lonely stag that appears in the collection A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets—the one by Sarumaru that goes "Walking over crimson leaves in the deep mountains, hearing the voice of the stag crying—how sad is autumn." It expresses the pathos of the sound of the stag crying out for its mate. Could it be that the voice you heard, my lord, was the cry of the sword in its loneliness, like to that of the male deer?"

  The Steward felt mild irritation at this somewhat pedantic exposition on the part of his secretary but asked, "Well then, where is this other, female sword?"

  "I suspect the swordsmith has it. He must have made two swords, planning to present both of them to your lordship. But then, seeing how splendidly they had turned out, he wanted to keep one of them for himself. Fine craftsmen often feel great attachment to their own works."

  The Steward was enraged to hear this and immediately sent retainers off to arrest the swordsmith, but by the time they reached his house, he had already fled and was nowhere to be found. They browbeat his terrified wife and children and ransacked the house, but the female sword they were looking for was gone. No doubt he had learned somehow that the Steward knew he was hiding the other sword and had made off with it. When the retainers returned and made their report to the Steward, he was filled with chagrin. "I'll find that swordsmith if I have to beat the bushes to do it. When I've got him, I'll chop off his head and then take possession of that female sword!"

  He scoured not only Bizen but also the neighboring provinces with the help of their stewards; but the swordsmith was nowhere to be found.

  Then one day some years later, a traveller brought news of the fugitive. The traveller had gone, he said, to the village of Noshirō in the land of Dewa in the far north and there had encountered someone who seemed to be the swordsmith. He had changed his name, of course, but the excellence of his work was the talk not only of Dewa but of the northern and eastern provinces generally. The secretary, hearing this news, at once reported it to the Steward, who said, "It must be him. And what a cheeky fellow he is, to be boldly carrying on with the same craft, even in far-off Dewa. Go, get hold of the second sword, and bring him back with you. If he refuses, kill him and bring his head back along with the sword."

  This was his master's command, and the secretary could not but obey.

  As he neared Dewa and began to hear talk of the celebrated craftsman, it became clear that he was known throughout the whole land, though under a different name. The secretary doubted that it could be the same man. If it were he, why would he have carried on his work in such a way that anyone could guess his real identity? It would be as if he were waiting for his whereabouts to become known to the Steward, and for the hands of his pursuers to reach out and take him.

  Arriving in Noshirō, he visited the house where the craftsman was living. He announced his name to a servant who came to the door, and then was startled to see the swordsmith appear with a smile on his face. Looking at the secretary, he said, "I understand. The Steward has ordered you to take me back to Bizen, along with the sword. But I can't go back, having done such a shameful thing. It's true: I made a pair of swords, male and female, from the iron ball. Of course I meant to give both of them to the Steward, but they were so fine I just had to keep one back. So I chose the female, little dreaming that the other sword would cry out in the night. They say a fine sword has a spirit of its own, and I'm sure a spirit lodged itself in those splendid swords I made. To have created even one sword in which an august spirit takes up residence is the greatest honor and joy for a swordsmith. So when I heard that the sword wept in the night, I was thrilled. Having made a sword like that, I felt I could die contented. I didn't care if the Steward in his anger had me killed. But I did feel that, since I had the ability, I wanted to make more wonderful swords before I died. That's why I fled. I chose this province because I wanted to do good work in this last, most distant part of Japan. Luckily, there is good-quality iron here, and I was able to make several fine swords that will last for generations to come. I knew that my fame would spread both within and beyond this province, and someday even as far as Bizen; and that the Steward would send men after me. I was afraid of that day, yet at the same time I awaited it. I have been able to do good work in these last few years, so I have no regrets."

  The swordsmith brought out from an inner room the other sword that he had made from the iron ball in Bizen and showed it to the secretary. He examined it, taking care to keep it as far from his neck as possible. It was as fine a sword as the one in the Steward's possession.

  "Take this sword back with you. Of course, without my head as well, t
he Steward will never be content. I'll go into the inner room now and chop my head off. You'll hear a noise; when it's quiet again, come into the room."

  The swordsmith took the sword with him into the next chamber. After a few moments, there was a sudden sharp cry and the sound of something thudding to the floor. Then it was quiet. Entering the room, the secretary found upon a stand the naked, unsheathed sword, and next to it the swordsmith's head. Beneath the stand were the sheath and the corpse. How had he managed to cut off his own head? At any rate, there would be trouble if the servants came now, so the secretary speedily wrapped the head in a carrying-cloth, holding the sword under his arm, and left the house.

  And so he started on his journey back to Bizen; but as he progressed, he noticed something peculiar. The head which he had been carrying with him from Dewa showed not the slightest signs of withering or putrefaction. Now a human body after death gives off a strong smell, and he had worried that the stench of the head on such a long journey would give him away. But far from rotting or smelling, the head looked fresher with every passing day. In addition, though it had had a rather melancholy expression when he looked at it immediately after the swordsmith's death, it now seemed to be regaining its vitality day by day, and to glare at the secretary whenever he took a timid peek at it.

  He was amazed and at a loss to understand what was happening. Soon he was too terrified to risk even a peek and simply carried the thing back to Bizen. Going directly to the Steward's mansion, he reported having fulfilled his mission and placed before his master the sword in its box and the head wrapped in cloth. The Steward thanked him for his trouble and rejoiced at now having the matched pair of swords. Opening the box and keeping the sword well away from his neck, as the late swordsmith had urged, he examined the weapon. "This too is a fine sword. And now they're a pair again, husband and wife. Let's give them a formal wedding ceremony tomorrow!" Putting the sword back in its box, he made as if to undo the carrying-cloth: "Since the fellow was able to make something this fine, I suppose he found it hard to give it up. At any rate, he was a great fool. How did he die?"