Modern Japanese Short Stories

by Ivan Morris

  “Do not talk like a coward! On the contrary, you should study the painting more carefully and then you will soon stop being frightened of it.”

  The girl could not bring herself to raise her head, which remained hidden in the sleeve of her kimono. She lay prostrate on the floor saying over and over: “Master, let me go home. I am frightened to be with you.”

  “You shall stay for a while,” said Seikichi imperiously. “I alone have the power to make of you a beautiful woman.”

  From among the bottles and needles on his shelf Seikichi selected a vial containing a powerful narcotic.

  * * *

  The sun shone brightly on the river. Its reflected rays threw a pattern like golden waves on the sliding doors and on the face of the young sleeping woman. Seikichi closed the doors and sat down beside her. Now for the first time he was able to relish her strange beauty fully, and he thought that he could have spent years sitting there gazing at that perfect, immobile face.

  But the urge to accomplish his design overcame him before many moments. Having fetched his tattooing instruments from the shelf, Seikichi uncovered the girl’s body and began to apply to her back the point of his pen, held between the thumb, ring finger, and little finger of his left hand. With the needle, held in his right hand, he pricked along the lines as they were drawn. As the people of Memphis once embellished with sphinxes and pyramids the fine land of Egypt, so Seikichi now adorned the pure skin of this young girl. It was as if the tattooer’s very spirit entered into the design, and each injected drop of vermilion was like a drop of his own blood penetrating the girl’s body.

  He was quite unconscious of the passage of time. Noon came and went, and the quiet spring day moved gradually toward its close. Indefatigably Seikichi’s hand pursued its work without ever waking the girl from her slumber. Presently the moon hung in the sky, pouring its dreamy light over the rooftops on the other side of the river. The tattoo was not yet half done. Seikichi interrupted his work to turn up the lamp, then sat down again and reached for his needle.

  Now each stroke demanded an effort, and the artist would let out a sigh, as if his own heart had felt the prick. Little by little there began to appear the outline of an enormous spider. As the pale glow of dawn entered the room, this animal of diabolic mien spread its eight legs over the girl’s back.

  The spring night was almost over. Already one could hear the dip of the oars as the rowboats passed up and down the river; above the sails of the fishing smacks, swollen with the morning breeze, one could see the mists lifting. And at last Seikichi brought himself to put down his needle. Standing aside, he studied the enormous female spider tattooed on the girl’s back, and as he gazed at it, he realized that in this work he had expressed the essence of his whole life. Now that it was completed, the artist was aware of a great emptiness.

  “To give you beauty I have poured my whole soul into this tattoo,” Seikichi murmured. “From now on there is not a woman in Japan to rival you! Never again will you know fear. All men, all men will be your victims….”

  Did she hear his words? A moan rose to her lips, her limbs moved. Gradually she began to regain consciousness, and as she lay breathing heavily in and out, the spider’s legs moved on her back like those of a living animal.

  “You must be suffering,” said Seikichi. “That is because the spider is embracing your body so closely.”

  She half opened her eyes. At first they had a vacant look, then the pupils began to shine with a brightness that matched the moonlight reflected on Seikichi’s face.

  “Master, let me see the tattoo on my back! If you have given me your soul, I must indeed have become beautiful.”

  She spoke as in a dream, and yet in her voice there was a new note of confidence, of power.

  “First you must take a bath to brighten the colors,” Seikichi answered her. And he added with unwonted solicitude: “It will be painful, most painful. Have courage!”

  “I will bear anything to become beautiful,” said the girl.

  She followed Seikichi down some stairs into the bathroom, and as she stepped into the steaming water her eyes glistened with pain.

  “Ah, ah, how it burns!” she groaned. “Master, leave me and wait upstairs. I shall join you when I am ready. I do not want any man to see me suffer.”

  But when she stepped out of the bath, she did not even have strength to dry herself. She pushed aside Seikichi’s helping hand and collapsed on the floor. Groaning, she lay with her long hair flowing across the floor. The mirror behind her reflected the soles of two feet, iridescent as mother-of-pearl.

  Seikichi went upstairs to wait for her, and when at last she joined him she was dressed with care. Her damp hair had been combed out and hung about her shoulders. Her delicate mouth and curving eyebrows no longer betrayed her ordeal, and as she gazed out at the river there was a cold glint in her eyes. Despite her youth she had the mien of a woman who had spent years in teahouses and acquired the art of mastering men’s hearts. Amazed, Seikichi reflected on the change in the timid girl since the day before. Going to the other room, he fetched the two picture scrolls which he had shown her.

  “I offer you these paintings,” he said. “And also, of course, the tattoo. They are yours to take away.”

  “Master,” she answered, “my heart is now free from all fear. And you … you shall be my first victim!”

  She threw him a look, piercing as a newly sharpened sword blade. It was the look of the young Chinese princess, and of that other woman who leaned against a cherry tree surrounded by singing birds and dead bodies. A feeling of triumph raced through Seikichi.

  “Let me see your tattoo,” he said to her. “Show me your tattoo.” Without a word, she inclined her head and unfastened her dress.

  The rays of the morning sun fell on the young girl’s back and its golden gleam seemed to set fire to the spider.

  ON THE CONDUCT OF LORD TADANAO

  BY Kan Kikuchi

  TRANSLATED BY Geoffrey Sargent

  Kan Kikuchi (1888–1948), though a prolific writer to the year of his death, produced his most distinguished work—mostly short stories and one-act plays—in the brief period from 1917 to 1920. A realist and skeptic in literature and a shrewd businessman in life, he subsequently scandalized the purists by turning to the production of literature for the masses, writing magazine serials (with one eye on the cinema), extremely popular dramas, and even (during the China Incident) government propaganda; and the financial success he thus achieved has had an adverse effect upon his posthumous reputation.

  The present story (Tadanao-kyō Gyōjō Ki in Japanese) was first published in 1918, when the author was thirty. It immediately attracted wide attention and set the fashion for a spate of imaginative reinterpretations of episodes in Japanese history or legend, expounding a clear thesis, which were known as “theme novels” (tēma shōsetsu). The story deals with a cause célèbre’s of the seventeenth century—the dispossession and banishment in 1623 of the young Daimyō of Echizen, lord of one of the greatest fiefs in the land—and its rather paradoxical theme is the inhumanity of the feudal system, not toward the oppressed vassals but toward the exalted daimyō.

  I

  LORD TADANAO’S councilors were summoned before Ieyasu at his headquarters and treated by His Excellency to an eloquent burst of abuse.

  “When Ii Tōdō’s forces were in trouble today, were the Echizen retainers taking a midday nap? Did no one tell them what was happening? If they had moved forward, covering the rear of the main attack, Osaka Castle would have fallen this very day. But, no. Thanks to your general’s youth, and thanks to his councilors’ being the biggest cowards in Japan, we have thrown away a battle! A precious battle!”

  Ieyasu did not wait for an answer. Livid with rage, he rose at once and left the room.

  The senior councilor, Honda Tomimasa, had come prepared with several excellent excuses for the Echizen forces’ failure to take part in the day’s fighting, but this perfunctory dismissal took him
by surprise. He had not had a chance to utter a word.

  There was obviously nothing more they could do, but the mood of the councilors, as they withdrew from headquarters and returned to the Echizen camp, was very far from one of philosophic resignation. They were in a panic. One thought tormented them all. How on earth could they phrase this matter when they made their report to Lord Tadanao?

  General Lord Tadanao, Daimyō of Echizen, was twenty-one. He had inherited his huge fief, with its annual revenue of almost three and a half million bushels of rice, at the tender age of thirteen upon the death of his father, Hidéyasu. His father had died in the intercalary fourth month of the year 1607, and never, from that moment until now, had the general suspected the existence, this side of heaven, of a will stronger than his own.

  The natural strength of will—or perhaps one should say the natural willfulness—which the general had brought with him into the world had since been cultivated by him to a growth of towering proportions, like a lone cedar shooting skyward from the peak of a lofty mountain. The councilors remembered the trepidation with which they had entered his presence, the gingerly fashion in which they had broken the news, when the order to join the present campaign had first reached the Echizen household.

  “Letters have been received from His Excellency the Shogun’s father,” they had reported. “He cordially requests your appearance before Osaka, with your forces.” The custom of representing to their young master that his will was absolute had by that time become second nature.

  And today it was their inescapable duty to convey Ieyasu’s words of rebuke to Lord Tadanao. What reactions might be set in motion by such outspoken criticism—for the sensation of being rebuked had had no part in their master’s experience, waking or dreaming, since the day he was born—was a question which naturally afforded them the liveliest misgivings.

  Lord Tadanao called them to his quarters as soon as he heard of their return.

  “And what did His Excellency my grandfather have to say? The usual set phrases of thanks for our labors, I suppose?” Lord Tadanao was in high spirits, and he smiled pleasantly as he put his questions. But this affability only increased the embarrassment of his councilors. It was some time before one of them gathered up sufficient courage to make a reply, and when he spoke his voice trembled.

  “I fear your lordship is mistaken. The fact that the Echizen forces took no part in today’s fighting seems to have aroused his excellency’s anger, and …” He ventured no more. The color drained from his face, and he prostrated himself on the ground.

  Never having known how it felt to be crossed or scolded, Lord Tadanao had developed no mechanism of resistance to the sensation, and no means of controlling himself when under its influence.

  “Eh! What did he say?” he bellowed. “When I begged to lead the attack he forbade it. And does he still affront me? Tadanao, die!—that is the meaning of my grandfather’s riddles. To all of us, to you as well as to myself, he says—die! Tomorrow, then, lord and vassal alike, we shall drench the enemy’s swords with our blood! Our corpses will whiten and rot beneath the castle walls! Tell this to my soldiers, and let them prepare themselves for death!”

  Tadanao’s hands, folded on his lap, were visibly trembling. With a sudden movement, as if he could bear the restraint no longer, he snatched his Nagamitsu sword from the hands of a page boy, unsheathed the blade, and thrust it forward before the councilors’ faces.

  “See! On this Nagamitsu I shall spike the head of Hideyori, and thus shall I thrust it into my grandfather’s face!” Seated on the floor though he was, he brandished the sword above his head and cut a series of wide circles in the air.

  Lord Tadanao, not much over twenty, was still subject to occasional half-lunatic tantrums of this sort. His councilors, whose experience of such outbursts dated back to the days of Tadanao’s father, merely shut their ears to the noise and lay prostrate on the ground, as if waiting for a gale to blow over.

  * * *

  The leaden skies of the last few days had vanished, and the seventh day of the fifth month of the year 1615 dawned exceptionally clear and still.

  The fall of Osaka castle was now simply a question of time. Most of the more distinguished captains among its garrison—men like Gotō Matabei, Kimura Nagato, and Susukida Hayatonoshō—had been killed in the desperate fighting of the previous summer, and now only Sanada Saemon, Chōsokabé Morichika, Mōri of Buzen, and a handful of others were left to face the final onslaught.

  The Shogun, Lord Hidétada, rose early this day and set out from his quarters an hour before dawn. At once he ordered the detachments of Matsudaira Toshitsuné of Chikuzen, Katō Samanosuké Yoshiaki, and Kuroda Nagamasa of Kai to move forward to the Okayama pass and take up positions as the first line of attack.

  Shortly after dawn Ieyasu appeared, borne from his quarters in a palanquin. He wore a short jacket of brown silk, a thin white kimono, and formal overskirts bound tightly at each ankle. Todo Takatora, meeting him by chance, expressed concern at this unwarlike mode of dress.

  “Today, surely, Your Excellency should be wearing armor?”

  Ieyasu grinned, and in his eyes was the usual glint of sly mockery.

  “Armor?” he said. “I need no armor to finish off the little fellow in Osaka.”

  In one hand he held a priest’s horsehair flapper, and with this he beat off the flies which kept swarming about him. Some thirty of his most trusted retainers, including Naito Kamon-no-Kami Masanari, Uemura Iemasa of Dewa, and Itakura Naizen-no-sho Shigemasa, walked in attendance upon the palanquin. And at the end of the procession, dressed exactly like Ieyasu and carried in a similar but lighter palanquin, came Honda Masanobu of Sado.

  Drawn up across the plain, between the Okayama and Tennoji highways, lay an army of more than a hundred and fifty thousand men. Banners fluttered in the early summer breeze, and polished helmet-graces flashed in the sun. Each detachment, drawn up in orderly ranks in its allotted position, stood waiting for the now overdue word of attack. But the handing down of this word was apparently no simple matter. Three messengers from Ieyasu, on white chargers, now wove their way through the assembled units.

  “Room is being made in the ranks for Lords Yoshinao and Yorinobu,” they announced. “The forces in the van are not yet to open the engagement. They will withdraw their horses a distance of one to two hundred yards, dismount, hold their lances at the ready, and await further orders.”

  This was not to the liking of Lord Tadanao of Echizen. His mind had been in a fever of excitement ever since the shock of the previous evening, and he had passed an almost sleepless night waiting for today’s battle. Now, as soon as he heard this last order, he sent Councilor Yoshida Shuri ahead to prepare the way and then moved forward himself with his whole force of near thirty thousand men—sixteen battalions headed by those under his two senior councilors, the brothers Honda. Pushing through the center of the lines occupied by the Kaga detachment, deaf to the angry protests of the Kaga men, he pressed on recklessly to the very foot of Chausu Hill, and there, a little to the left of the front line forces under Honda Tadayori of Izumo, he deployed his troops in extended formation for attack.

  Just at that moment an order from the Shogun was transmitted to all units: “The defenders are evacuating their advanced posts and appear to be waiting for night. The order to attack will shortly be given.”

  But Lord Tadanao was waiting no longer for orders. As two or three exploratory shots were directed at the enemy from Honda Tadayori’s forward positions, the Echizen forces suddenly let loose a salvo from seven or eight hundred muskets, and, screened beneath billowing clouds of smoke, all sixteen battalions advanced simultaneously, like a moving forest, upon Chausu Hill.

  The defense of the sector from the Aoya pass to Chausu Hill was entrusted to Sanada Saemon and his son, supported a little to the south by Iki Shichirōémon Tōotaka, Watanabé Kuranosuké Tadasu, and Ōtani Daigaku Yoshitané; but the combined strength of these units amounted to little more
than six thousand men.

  Among the forces which confronted them, the great Echizen army stood out at once for its splendor and immensity. Its general, too, Lord Tadanao, was a conspicuous figure. He gave the impression of a man resolved to achieve glory this day at any cost. His general’s baton had been cast aside, and, brandishing in its stead a huge cavalry lance, he was urging his horse at the gallop closer and closer to the enemy, paying no heed to the caution of his lieutenants.

  With their general setting such an example, the rank and file fought with furious enthusiasm, each determined to outshine his neighbor, and the enemy forces facing the Echizen army swayed and broke like trees in a gale. The first great triumph came when Honda Tadamasa of Iyo slew Nenryū Sadayū, the champion swordsman of the castle garrison, and similar feats of arms, by men like Aoki Shinbei, Otobé Kurobei, Ogita Shumé, and Toshima Shuzen, followed in quick succession. Sanada Saemon’s troops, defending the line from Chausu Hill to the Koshin Temple, were routed in a single assault, Saemon himself falling to Nishio Nizaemon, and his chief lieutenant to Nomoto Ukon. The Echizen forces, pressing close upon the fleeing castle troops, then forced their way through the Senba pass to the Black Gate, raised their standard on the gate itself, and set fires ablaze at a number of places inside the castle.

  Three thousand six hundred and fifty-two enemy heads were taken. In the battle-honors of this day there was no one whose share was comparable to that of Lord Tadanao.

  Lord Tadanao had drawn up his horse on the crest of Chausu Hill. From there he saw the Echizen banners and war pennants sweep like a tidal wave across the castle moat, overflow into the perimeter beyond, re-form into a narrow triangular salient which jutted conspicuously from the main attacking lines, and drive on like a wedge into the interior of the castle. And as he watched he leaped up and down in his saddle in a transport of simple, boyish glee.

  A soldier from the front line came running back.