SI1 Shinju (1994)

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Take this to the chief clerk and have him convey the orders to the departments involved,” he told Tsunehiko.

  “Yes, Yoriki Sano-san!” Tsunehiko took the report, rolled it, and tied a silk ribbon around it. Still breathing hard, he rose and slid open the door.

  Laughter sounded in the corridor outside. Yamaga and Hayashi swished past.

  “We’ll cut a swath through Yoshiwara tonight,” Sano heard Yamaga say. “The women there will satisfy our every desire.”

  Hayashi replied, “Then let us not delay!”

  Their laughter rang out again as they disappeared. Phrases of lewd conversation drifted back toward Sano: “… voluptuous buttocks… fragrant loins… ” All at once a picture of the future flashed before him. He saw what would happen if he followed the path that Ogyu had laid out for him. His principles would lose their meaning for him. He would end up like Yamaga and Hayashi, who cared more about fashion and tradition than for their work. He would let his minions run his department while he left his post early to sport with prostitutes in the pleasure quarter. He would sacrifice truth for security, justice for the sake of comfort.

  “Wait!” he ordered Tsunehiko.

  Snatching the report from his surprised secretary’s hand, he tore it in two. Quickly he wrote another report classifying Noriyoshi’s and Yukiko’s deaths as suspicious and requiring further investigation. This he gave to Tsunehiko. Then he strode from the room. He didn’t want to coast along in his position, reaping the certain rewards that unquestioning obedience would bring. Instead he wanted to feel the excitement of pursuing the truth-as he had when he’d been a scholar, then again during the arson investigation-and the elation of knowing that by finding it, he had done some good. Somehow he must reconcile personal desire with the Way of the Warrior and all its obligations to family and master. He must discover the truth about the shinjū.

  Chapter 2

  Edo Jail was a place of death and defilement to which no one ever went voluntarily. Sano had never seen it before and wouldn’t have come now, except he knew that the bodies of Noriyoshi and Yukiko had been taken to the morgue there. Now he surveyed the jail with mingled curiosity and unease.

  The Tokugawa prison sprawled along a narrow canal that formed a moat before its entrance. Guard towers perched at each corner of the high stone walls that rose straight up out of the stagnant water. Dark liquid of an unidentified and probably unspeakable nature trickled from holes at the base of the walls down to the canal. Above the walls, gabled roofs protruded. Signs of neglect gave mute testimony to the city’s repugnance toward the jail and its inhabitants: weeds and moss growing between the stones, missing roof tiles, and peeling plaster. A rickety wooden bridge spanned the canal, ending at the guardhouse and the portals of a massive, iron-banded wooden gate. All around the jail lay the miserable shacks and drab, winding streets of Kodemma-cho. Located near the river in the northeast sector of Nihonbashi, Kodemma-cho provided an ideal site for the jail-as far from the castle and the administrative district as convenience would allow.

  Sano was thankful for the shrill shouts of the ragged children playing in the streets, and for the greasy smell of food frying in backyard kitchens. They masked whatever sounds and smells emanated from the jail. A tremor ran down his spine as he remembered the stories he’d heard about what went on there. Taking a deep breath, he urged his horse onto the bridge.

  A commotion began in the guardhouse as Sano arrived. When he dismounted and secured his horse to a post, the three guards nearly fell over one another trying to get out the door. He saw them exchange confused glances. Then they bowed low.

  “We are at your service, master,” the guards chorused.

  Sano took in their unkempt appearance and cropped hair, the much-repaired leather armor and leggings, the single long sword that each wore. These were commoners-probably former smalltime criminals-permitted to bear arms in order that samurai would not have to serve in such a degrading capacity.

  “I am Yoriki Sano Ichirō,” he said. “I wish to interview the men who handled the bodies of the double-suicide victims this morning.

  The guards gaped at him. They’d probably never had a yoriki visitor before, Sano thought, let alone received such an unusual request from one; he was sure that his colleagues never set foot here. One of the guards let out a nervous titter. The large man next to him, presumably the leader, backhanded him a sharp blow.

  “What are you waiting for?” he growled. “Take him to the warden at once!”

  The guard slid back the thick wooden beams that barred the gate. Sano entered the jail compound, prepared for the worst.

  His first impression of the compound was reassuring. In a simple courtyard of packed earth, five more guards patrolled. The odor of urine hung in the air, but no worse than near the backstreet privies of Edo. Thirty paces beyond rose a dingy wooden building with heavy bars over the windows. Entering through its plank door, he could see past the entryway to a room that might have been an office in the administrative district, except for the shabby appearance of the furnishings and workers. The guard led him down the outer corridor and knocked on a door.

  “Enter!”

  Bowing to someone within, the guard said, “Honorable Warden, I bring you a distinguished visitor.” He moved over to let Sano inside.

  The warden, a stout man at a desk piled with papers, greeted Sano’s request with a look of bewilderment. Then he shrugged and said to the guard, “Bring the eta.” He turned to Sano apologetically. “I must ask you to see them outside, yoriki. They aren’t allowed in this building.”

  “Of course.”

  Sano followed the guard back out to the courtyard, pondering this bit of jail protocol. The eta were society’s outcasts. Their hereditary link with such death-related occupations as butchering and leather tanning rendered them spiritually unclean. Consequently, other classes shunned them. They lived apart from the rest of the population in slums on the outskirts of town. They couldn’t marry outside their class, or otherwise escape from it. They performed the dirtiest and most menial of tasks: emptying cesspools, collecting garbage, clearing away bodies after floods, tires, and earthquakes-and staffing the jail and morgue. Sano had known that the eta acted as corpse handlers here. But he hadn’t realized that even within the jail, certain areas were off limits to them.

  “Please wait here, sir.” The guard disappeared around the corner of the building. Presently he returned with three men, all wearing identical short, unbleached muslin kimonos.

  Two were still in their teens, the other a man of about fifty. Eyes wary, like those of trapped animals, they immediately dropped to their knees before him, foreheads touching the ground, arms extended. The two young ones were trembling, and Sano understood why: a samurai could kill them on a whim-to test a new sword, if he so desired-without fear of reprisal. But he had also heard horrifying stories about the suffering inflicted upon prisoners by eta jailers, torturers, and executioners. Now he addressed them with a mixture of pity and revulsion.

  “You handled the bodies from the shinjū this morning,” he said. “Is that right?”

  Silence. Then the older man said, “Yes, master.” The others echoed him, faintly.

  “Did you see any signs that they were not suicides? Any wounds? Bruises?”

  “No, master,” the older man said. The others, trembling violently now, didn’t answer.

  “Don’t be afraid. Think. Tell me what the bodies looked like.”

  “I’m sorry, master, I don’t know.”

  After several more attempts, Sano realized that he would get no useful information from these frightened, inarticulate men. “You may go now,” he said, disappointed.

  The two younger men hastily backed away, still kneeling, then rose and took off at a run. But the older one didn’t move.

  “Honorable master, I beg permission to try to help you,” he said.

  Sano’s hope stirred. “Stand,” he ordered, wanting a better look at this eta who had the courag
e to assert himself. “What is it you want to tell me?”

  The eta stood. He had gray hair, intelligent eyes set deeply in a square, stern face, and a dignified bearing.

  “I can say nothing myself, master,” he said, looking Sano straight in the eye. “But I can take you to someone who knows all there is to know.”

  Intrigued, Sano said, “Very well.”

  He followed the eta along the same path the guard had taken, around the building then through another courtyard. There he saw a huge building of unpainted plaster, set on a high stone foundation: the jail proper. Tiny windows far above the ground gave it the look of a fortress. Five more guards let them through a door even thicker and more heavily reinforced than the main gate.

  Noise and odor simultaneously attacked Sano’s senses. Moans and sobs issued from behind the solid doors that lined the passage. A pair of jailers pushed past Sano. One banged loudly on each door, adding to the din.

  “We’re watching you, you stinking sons of whores!” he shouted. “Behave yourselves!”

  The other shoved trays into each cell through slots at the bottoms of the doors. In the weak daylight that shone through the windows at either end of the passage, Sano saw that the rations were rotten vegetables and moldy rice. Flies buzzed thickly, alighting on his face and hands. Furiously he brushed them away. A powerful stench of urine, feces, and vomit filled his nostrils; he tried not to breathe. Rivulets of filthy water ran out of the cells and onto the stone floor. Sano gasped as a huge rat scurried across his path. Quickly the eta led him around a corner and down another passage. Here the noise diminished, although the smell didn’t. Sano began to relax, when suddenly a door flew open. Two jailers hurried toward him, dragging between them a naked, un-conscious man. Blood poured from the man’s nose; fresh cuts covered his torso. The jailers opened a cell and threw the man inside. As Sano passed, he caught a glimpse of five emaciated men lying in a pool of filth in the cramped space. He looked away, horrified. Could anyone possibly deserve such treatment? Couldn’t the government control its subjects some other way than by torturing and starving those who broke the law? That most sentences were short seemed a dubious blessing: many prisoners were executed after their trials. That the government he served would do such things frightened him. He tried not to think of it.

  Then, mercifully, the eta led him outside into the cold, fresh air. They were in another courtyard, this one surrounded by a high bamboo fence. Sano inhaled gratefully.

  “The morgue, master.” The eta opened the door of a thatch-roofed building and gestured for him to enter.

  Sano hesitated. He feared that whatever awaited him in the morgue would be worse than anything he’d seen yet. But when he stepped inside, there was only a wooden-floored room with cabinets and stone troughs lining the walls, and in the center two waist-high tables with raised sides. A man stood at the open window, his profile to Sano, reading a book by the fading afternoon light. He wore a long dark blue coat, the physician’s traditional uniform, with a gray quilt over his shoulders to ward off the room’s damp chill. He turned. One look at his face sent a shock of recognition through Sano.

  The man was perhaps seventy years of age, with a high, bony forehead and prominent cheekbones. A deep furrow ran from either side of his long, ascetic nose to the narrow line of his mouth. He had short white hair that receded at the temples but grew abundantly over the rest of his scalp. His shrewd eyes regarded Sano with displeasure, and he glanced down at his book as if annoyed at the interruption. Sano, following his gaze, also looked at the book. As he moved closer, he saw a drawing of the human body, covered with foreign words.

  The foreign book and the man’s distinctive features and uniform identified him to Sano immediately. Ten years ago he had seen this man paraded through Edo ’s streets in disgrace. He had seen that face on the town notice boards and on broadsheets distributed by the news sellers.

  “Dr. Ito Genboku!” Sano blurted out. “But I thought-” He stopped, not wanting to offend the doctor with personal remarks.

  Fifty years ago, the government had instituted a policy of strict isolation from the outside world. Iemitsu, the third Tokugawa shogun, had wanted to stabilize the country after years of civil war. Fearing that foreign weapons and military aid would allow various daimyo to overthrow his regime, he’d expelled the Portuguese merchants and missionaries and all other foreigners from Japan, and purged the country of all foreign influence. Only the Dutch were allowed trading privileges. Confined to the island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay, the merchants were guarded day and night, their contact with the Japanese limited to the shogun’s most trusted retainers. To this day, foreign books were banned; anyone caught practicing foreign science faced harsh punishment.

  But a clandestine movement had sprung up among intellectuals. Japanese rangakusha-scholars of Dutch learning-procured foreign books on medicine, astronomy, math, physics, botany, geography, and military science through illicit channels. They pursued their forbidden knowledge in secret. Now Sano marveled at finding himself in the presence of the most famous rangakusha, a man whose courage he’d secretly admired, and never forgotten. Dr. Ito Genboku, once physician to the imperial family. Exiled to Enoshima for practicing Dutch medicine and carrying out scientific experiments. What was he doing here?

  “Yes, I am Ito Genboku, and no, I never did go to Enoshima,” Dr. Ito said, echoing Sano’s thoughts. He had a dry but pleasant voice. Humor and irony colored it as he added, “Although some would consider my position as custodian of Edo Morgue much worse than exile. No doubt the Tokugawas thought so when they changed the terms of my sentence. However, it has its compensations.” He held up his book. “I can pursue my studies in peace here. No one cares, as long as the morgue operates smoothly.” Then, abruptly: “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  As Sano introduced himself and explained why he’d come, he realized that he had not offered the proper greetings to Dr. Ito. Something about Ito made formality seem unnecessary. Perhaps it was Ito’s unusually direct manner, or the fact that his status as a physician placed him outside the rigid class system that defined relations between other men.

  “The eta couldn’t tell me anything, so this one brought me to you,” he finished. “Did you see anything to indicate that the deaths were anything but suicide?”

  “I’ve not seen the bodies. Regrettably I have been occupied with those who perished in last night’s fire.” Dr. Ito bent a challenging gaze upon Sano. “Perhaps the best way for you to gain knowledge about the deaths would be to exercise your own powers of observation instead of relying on mine. However, Niu Yukiko has already been returned to her family for burial.”

  So Magistrate Ogyu hadn’t trusted him entirely after all, Sano thought. He’d issued the return order himself, leaving no room for mistakes or negligence.

  “But we still have Noriyoshi’s body,” Ito continued. “Would you like to examine it with me?”

  Sano felt trapped. The Shinto tradition in which he’d been raised taught that any contact with death conferred a spiritual pollution. But to admit his fear of defilement to this man would be shameful. His small independent quest for truth and knowledge seemed insignificant beside Ito’s sacrifice.

  “Yes, Ito-san,” he answered.

  Dr. Ito turned to the eta. “Mura-san,” he said, using the respectful form of address as he would to any other man, “fetch Noriyoshi’s body.”

  Mura left the room. When he returned, the two other eta that Sano had met were with him. Mura held a bundle of cloth, which he gave to Dr. Ito. The others carried a long form shrouded in white cotton; they placed it on one of the tables and began to unwrap it.

  “Noriyoshi’s effects,” Ito said, offering the cloth bundle to Sano.

  Sano spread the contents on the other table, delaying his first look at the body emerging from the shroud. Wrapped inside the blue trousers and kimono he found one straw sandal.

  “A poor man,” Sano remarked, fingering the coarse, cheap material of t
he clothes. The sandal, heavily worn on the inner heel, could have belonged to any commoner. He sighed. “The Nius would have opposed a marriage between him and Yukiko for that reason alone.” Had he risked Ogyu’s wrath and braved the jail’s horrors for nothing? “Maybe it was a love suicide after all.”

  “Perhaps Noriyoshi himself will tell us.” Dr. Ito laid aside his book and walked toward the now-exposed body. Although his posture was upright and authoritative, he moved gingerly. A spasm of pain crossed his face. “You may go now,” he said to the eta who had brought the body. “Mura-san, I’d like you to stay.”

  Unable to postpone seeing the body any longer, Sano looked toward the table.

  His first sensation was relief. The rigidity that held Noriyoshi’s limbs stiff, his toes pointed straight at the ceiling, and his mouth agape made him resemble a somewhat grotesque doll instead of a man who had once lived and breathed. He bore no resemblance to the mutilated corpses Sano had seen at the public execution grounds, or to the bloated carcasses pulled from the canals after a flood. Dirt and shreds of seaweed clung to his bare skin and his loincloth, but there was no blood and no sign of decay. Curious now, Sano approached the table for a closer look. The deep red bruises circling Noriyoshi’s wrists and ankles caught his attention.

  “Burns from the ropes that bound him to Yukiko,” Dr. Ito explained.

  Otherwise, Noriyoshi was unmarked. His stomach was paunchy and his face puffy, but his arms and legs were wiry and he had most of his teeth. Before his death, he’d apparently enjoyed at least fair health for a man of forty-odd years. If he had died by any means other than drowning himself, it didn’t show.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Sano said. “Thank you for-”

  But Dr. Ito didn’t seem to hear. Frowning at Noriyoshi, he said, “Mura-san. Turn him.”

  The eta obligingly rolled the body onto its side. Dr. Ito bent over it, scrutinizing the head and neck.