Modern Japanese Short Stories

by Ivan Morris

  “Aoki Shinbei was the first inside the castle, sir!”

  Lord Tadanao’s face beamed as he heard the report.

  “Shinbei’s the bravest of them all!” His voice was shrill with excitement, and he was obliged to quiet his horse, which had taken alarm at the sound and was urging itself forward. “Return at once and tell Shinbei that his revenue is increased by twenty-five thousand bushels!”

  What manner of glory was his, as a general, now? That he should be able to offer up the head of Sanada Saemon, the man who had wrought such havoc among the besieging forces—this was enough in itself. But now the supreme distinction of setting first foot within the castle walls had been won, among all these detachments from so many fiefs, by a soldier of his own army! What manner of glory, thought Lord Tadanao, might this be?

  Pondering the miraculous achievements of his retainers, Lord Tadanao felt all to be but a reflection of his personal strength and power of will. The wound to his self-respect dealt him yesterday by his grandfather Ieyasu was now completely healed. But it was more than just that: Lord Tadanao’s faith in himself was now many times stronger and more fervent even than before.

  Almost one hundred daimyō had taken part in the attack on Osaka Castle, and when Lord Tadanao reflected that not one of them could have won laurels to match his own, he experienced a glow of immense satisfaction. He could almost have believed a halo of glory hovered about his person. But he felt far from surprised. Indeed, as the son of the peerlessly courageous Hidéyasu, and as a blood relation of the Tokugawa family, it seemed to him that such deeds of martial valor as he had performed today were perfectly natural, almost disappointingly so. Lord Tadanao’s exultation became mingled with a feeling of complacency which he found it difficult to keep in check.

  “My grandfather was a little too hasty in his estimate of this Tadanao. I must see him and hear what he has to say.” He hurried off at once to seek an audience with Ieyasu, whose headquarters had now been moved up to the Okayama pass.

  Ieyasu, seated on a campstool, was receiving the formal congratulations of a succession of daimyō, but when Lord Tadanao appeared he rose from his seat—a signal honor—and grasped him by the hand.

  “Splendid! The hero of the day, and a true grandson of Ieyasu!” He drew Lord Tadanao close, praising him unreservedly to his face. “In military valor you have shown yourself worthy of a place beside Fan Kuai of China. Yes, truly, you are the Fan Kuai of Japan!”

  Lord Tadanao was of an ingenuous, uncomplicated nature, and as he heard himself extolled in this manner tears of happiness welled in his eyes. The fact that he had been insulted by this same person only the day before was instantly forgotten. Not the slightest tinge of resentment remained.

  On returning that evening to his camp he mustered his retainers for a great celebration. He knew himself now to be the strongest and bravest of all men. Even that flattering reference of Ieyasu’s to “the Fan Kuai of Japan” seemed to him, as he recalled it, only partially adequate.

  Darkness had fallen, and in the night sky he could see the ruddy reflection of scattered fires still raging within Osaka Castle. Those fires, he idly imagined, were bonfires lit in honor of his own exploits. He drank to them, refilling his great wine cup again and again. Except for a certain hazy exhilaration, Lord Tadanao’s mind was empty of all thought and feeling.

  On the fifth day of the following month, when all the feudal lords who had assisted in the final assault were reassembled at Nijō Castle in Kyoto, Ieyasu took Lord Tadanao by the hand and addressed him as follows:

  “When your father Hidéyasu was still alive you always behaved toward me with the utmost respect, as became a filial grandson. Now you have shown your loyalty on the field of battle, excelling all others, and my satisfaction is complete. I had considered offering you a written address of thanks, but this is a family matter and such ceremony might not be fitting. Rest assured, then, that as long as my own family line continues, the household of Echizen shall remain in undisturbed peace, as firm as the ageless rocks.” With these words he presented to Lord Tadanao a flower-patterned tea canister from his private collection.

  Overwhelmed by the honor, Lord Tadanao fancied for a moment that there radiated from his person—from his person alone in this vast assemblage of his peers—shafts of dazzling light. Inside him there was a throbbing, flooding warmth of limitless satisfaction, as if there were nothing more he could ever wish for in this world.

  Satisfaction, of course, was by no means an entirely novel sensation for one whose will had not normally encountered obstacles, and who was able, more often than not, to gratify his emotional impulses to the full. Since early childhood his will and his emotions, being subject to no form of discipline from without, had developed at their own pace and run riot as they pleased. Lord Tadanao carried no memories of inferiority or defeat in anything he had ever undertaken. In his childhood, shooting toy arrows at toy targets in competition with his playmates, he had always been the winner. Whenever a tournament of court football was held within the castle—for courtiers from Kyoto had introduced the art even to the garrison of Fukui—the player who kicked with the greatest skill had invariably been Lord Tadanao. Even in trifling board games like Gobang, Chinese Chess, and Double Six, he was victorious in nine cases out of ten. He had naturally, too, shown precocious ability in all the arts which were essential to a military man—in archery, horsemanship, jousting, and swordplay—and after outclassing his companion pages, who had started on equal terms with himself, he gave regular proof of his amazing prowess by defeating, with ease, even those young samurai who were acknowledged within his household as the champions in their respective fields.

  In this way, with the passage of the years, a sense of superiority over his immediate circle had taken firm root in his mind. And, deep down, he had come to cherish the conviction that he was, in fact, of a superior species, possessing characteristics quite distinct from those of his retainers.

  But, although Lord Tadanao was sufficiently convinced of his preeminence over his own retainers, he had, despite himself, fallen prey to certain melancholy misgivings since setting out for the Osaka campaign. His competitors in the struggle for glory would now be daimyō, men of his own class. Was it possible that he might find himself outshone by some among their number? Worse, now that he was to be tested in that very business of war to which men of his class were dedicated, might he, unawares, commit some error of judgment as a general? In actual fact, in the engagement of the sixth of the fifth month, by deferring his entry into the battle until too late, he had committed just such an error, and had dangerously shaken even his own deep-set faith in himself. But the glory he had won on the very next day, in the storming of the castle, had completely healed this wound to his self-esteem. It had done more. The Echizen forces had been first inside the castle, and their battle-honors had been overwhelmingly greater than those of any other detachment; Lord Tadanao’s comparatively modest conviction that he was a better man than any of his retainers had consequently grown more comprehensive in scope, and changed to a conviction that he was a better man than any of the sixty noble lords who had joined in the storming of the castle. The forces which had taken three thousand seven hundred and fifty enemy heads in the Osaka campaign, and the forces, moreover, which had taken the head of General Sanada Saemon, belonged to Lord Tadanao. There was no doubt of that.

  The flower-patterned tea canister and the title of “the Fan Kuai of Japan” had made a deep impression on Lord Tadanao’s mind. He regarded them together as a twin testimonial to his preeminent merit. It was exhilarating. He felt as if all one hundred and twenty daimyō and lesser lords in that room were gazing upon Lord Tadanao in wide-eyed wonder and admiration.

  Until now he had been proud to think himself a finer man than any of his retainers. But it was not really satisfactory, this measuring himself only by those who were his subordinates. Now, taken by the hand and cordially welcomed by no less a person than His Excellency, he was being singl
ed out for praise before all the lords in the land.

  Lords Yoshinao and Yorinobu, who were his own uncles, had won no particular distinction. Another uncle, Lord Tadateru, Chamberlain of Echigo, had failed to take any part in the fighting on the seventh and had positively fallen into disgrace. Even the honors won by the great and celebrated clans of Daté, Maeda, and Kuroda paled to insignificance, to less than the gleam of fireflies before a full moon, when set beside those of the Echizen household.

  When he thought in this way, Lord Tadanao’s sense of superiority, which had been momentarily unsettled on that one occasion by Ieyasu’s cutting rebuke, not only miraculously recovered all its former strength, but went on, by a process of violent reaction, to become something far more splendid and unshakable than it had ever been before.

  Thus Lord Tadanao, Daimyō of Echizen, taking with him the proud consciousness of being the foremost hero in the land, withdrew from Kyoto in the eighth month of that year and returned in a most exalted frame of mind to his castle seat at Fukui.

  II

  Hundreds of candles, set in silver candlesticks, blazed in the great hall of the castle at Echizen Kitanoshō. The evening’s festivities, as clearly shown by the solid masses of white wax which had already climbed high about the base of each candlestick, were well advanced. It had been Lord Tadanao’s custom, since returning to his province, to gather together his young retainers during the day for tournaments, and at night, as soon as the games were over, to invite the whole company to a huge informal banquet.

  The title of “the Fan Kuai of Japan,” so flatteringly conferred upon him by his grandfather Ieyasu, was a source of immense happiness to Lord Tadanao. His heart beat quicker at the mere thought of it. And by thus competing with the young warriors of his household, measuring his own skill with the spear and the sword against theirs, and soundly defeating all comers, he was providing this proud new boast of his with the daily sustenance it demanded.

  The young warriors, ranged at this moment in a deep curve around the great hall below the step of the slightly elevated section on which he himself was seated, had been specially selected from among his numerous young retainers for their prowess in the military arts. Among them he could see some who were still mere youths, their hair not yet trimmed to the styles of manhood, but one and all were powerfully built, and their eyes shone vigorously.

  But an even nobler and more gallant spectacle was presented by the master of the castle himself, Lord Tadanao. Though lean and trim in figure, his eyes glowed darkly with an almost uncanny quality of penetration, and in the set of his brow there was an overwhelming suggestion of dauntless courage.

  Lord Tadanao was a little intoxicated. Everything had a tendency to revolve before his eyes. Nevertheless, he steadied himself and gazed slowly around the whole assembly. The one hundred or more young men seated in the hall below him were every one of them slaves to his will. As the thought passed through his mind he could not check a sudden surge of that special pride known only to those who wield great authority.

  But the pride he felt this evening was not that alone. It was twofold. For in his prowess as a fighting man, too, he had proved himself superior to all these young men seated before him.

  Earlier today he had assembled his retainers for yet another great tournament. He had chosen from their number those judged most proficient in the art of wielding the spear, and had divided them into two teams, the Reds and the Whites.

  He himself had taken command of the Reds. But from the very start his teammates had fared badly. One after another they had retired from the arena in defeat, and when it came to the deputy commander’s turn, and he too was laid low, there still remained five members of the White team who had not yet been obliged to fight.

  It was at this juncture that Lord Tadanao, as commander of the Reds, strode valiantly and imposingly into the arena, brandishing his huge six-yard spear with masterful ease. The White warriors were cowed at the mere sight. His first opponent, the head page boy, who had been so overawed by Lord Tadanao’s warlike appearance that he seemed of two minds whether to join battle or flee, had his spear struck from his grasp before he had really started, and upon receiving a blow in the stomach, he collapsed in the semblance of swoon. The following two contestants, a stable overseer and an officer of the treasury, were stricken to the ground in rapid succession. The deputy commander of the Whites next took the field. This was Ōshima Sadayū, eldest son of the castle’s fencing instructor, Ōshima Sazen, and rated second to none in the whole Echizen household in his skill with the spear.

  There was a murmur of excited whispering among the spectators. “Even his lordship, for all his strength, may find Sadayū a stiff proposition.” But after some seven or eight vigorous exchanges Sadayū too was humbled. Recoiling from a glancing blow to his thigh, and momentarily set off balance, he lowered his guard and exposed himself to a crippling thrust from directly in front, which landed squarely on the vital region of his chest. His downfall was greeted with wild cheering from the spectators’ seats, where the whole of Lord Tadanao’s household was gathered. Lord Tadanao, gasping a little for breath, stood quietly awaiting the appearance of the rival commander. He was experiencing, not for the first time in his life, a glow of sublime and exhilarating self-satisfaction.

  The White commander was a young man called Onoda Ukon. At the age of twelve he had become a pupil of Gondo Saemon, the celebrated Kyoto master of spearmanship, and at the age of twenty, demonstrating the good use which he had made of his training, he had defeated his own teacher. But Lord Tadanao held no one in awe. At Ukon’s sharp cry of challenge—“Ei!”—he leveled his spear and went furiously in to the attack. There was more than the confidence of skill behind his onslaught. There was, it seemed to the onlookers, the whole power and majesty of the lord of a province, of the daimyō of a fief of almost three and a half million bushels. The battle was hotly contested for some twenty exchanges, and then, suddenly, Ukon staggered beneath a powerful blow to his right shoulder, retreated a few steps, and, prostrating himself before Lord Tadanao, signified his surrender.

  The spectators cheered until the very walls of Kitanoshō Castle trembled. Lord Tadanao felt once more that glow of sublime self-satisfaction. Returning to his seat of honor, he announced, in a great voice:

  “Gentlemen, my sincere thanks to you all. It is now my wish that, as some compensation for your labors, you should join me in a feast.”

  He was in even greater spirits than usual. As the banquet proceeded, his most trusted retainers came before him, one after another, and offered their compliments.

  “My lord! Since your experiences amid the arrows in the Osaka campaign you have advanced yet further in your skill. People like ourselves are no longer worthy opponents for you.”

  The merest mention of the Osaka campaign was enough to make Lord Tadanao childishly happy. But even Lord Tadanao was by this time feeling very much unsteadied by the wine. Looking about the assembly he could see that a large number of his guests had already lapsed into some kind of drunken stupor. Some had reached the stage of incoherence. Others were softly murmuring sentimental songs. It was obvious that there was little life left in the evening’s entertainment.

  Lord Tadanao recalled suddenly the aura of feminine refinement which pervaded his own apartments, and he sickened at the boorishness of this all-male carousal. Abruptly he rose.

  “Gentlemen, I beg your leave!” Without further ceremony he left the hall. Even the most heavily intoxicated of his guests managed somehow to straighten their disarray and make a low obeisance. The small page boys, who had been fast asleep until this moment, opened their eyes with a start and hurried out after their master.

  Lord Tadanao, emerging onto the long open veranda which led to his apartments, sensed with pleasure the cold caress on his cheeks of the early autumn air. Beyond, from where thick clusters of lespedeza flowers showed faintly white in the dim glow of a tenth-day moon, he could hear the singing of autumn insects.

&n
bsp; Lord Tadanao decided to take a stroll in the garden. He dismissed the serving-maid sent from his apartments to meet him, and, accompanied only by a single page boy, stepped down from the veranda. The surface of the garden was moist with dew. The dim moonlight made the town beneath the castle seem like some chiaroscuro painting afloat in a vast luminous space of night air.

  It was long since he had found himself in surroundings of such utter quietness. All heaven and earth was sad and still. There was only a faint, confused sound of revelry, drifting across from the great hall he had just left. Since his departure the party seemed to have grown more boisterous, for he could hear, mingled with the other sounds, someone singing to the accompaniment of an Azuma zither. But the hall was distant, and the sounds reached him too faintly to be an annoyance.

  Lord Tadanao followed a narrow path through the lespedeza thicket, skirted the rocky spring, ascended a miniature hill, and arrived before a small thatched pavilion. He went inside. From here the mountains of the Shin-Etsu range could be dimly seen, floating high in the moon-drenched air. Lord Tadanao fell into a sentimental reverie, seized by an emotion he had never before experienced in all his life as a daimyō; and he stood where he was, unconscious of the passage of time, for almost an hour.

  Suddenly he heard men’s voices. In the stillness which, until now, had held only the sad voices of insects, the voices of men sounded. There were two people, it seemed, and as they talked they drew closer and closer to the pavilion.

  Lord Tadanao was loath to have the pleasant serenity of his feelings at this moment shattered by casual intruders. But he could not, on this particular night, summon up sufficient indignation to have his page order the men away. Gradually, still talking, they drew nearer. The interior of the pavilion was in darkness, untouched by the light of the moon, and the two men could have had no idea that their lord was standing there. He felt no curiosity to know who these intruders were. But as they came slowly nearer he could hardly help recognizing their voices. The man who sounded a little the worse for drink was Onoda Ukon, the White commander in today’s tournament. The other, the one with the sharp, nervous voice, was the deputy commander, Ōshima Sadayū, who had been so quickly beaten to submission this day by Lord Tadanao. The two of them seemed to have been talking for some time about the battle of the Reds and Whites.