Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

by Shusaku Endo

  3. Sotome, a tiny fishing village that has recently been incorporated into Nagasaki City, is both the model for Tomogi Village in Endō’s famed novel Silence and the location of the Endō Shūsaku Literary Museum. It is approximately a forty-minute drive from downtown Nagasaki.

  4. Until it was closed in the mid-eighteenth century, a mint where copper coins were cast was located in the Dōza (copper guild) District of Nagasaki.

  THE TEMPLE OF THE SOUTHERN BARBARIANS

  TSUCHIFURU—

  Tsuchifuru are the yellow dust storms that blow in from the Chinese continent. The storms sweep over Nagasaki shortly before the arrival of spring. The sky becomes an amber cloud, and those who venture out of doors are shrouded in specks of wind-borne dust that cover their faces and necks.

  As soon as the storm ends, spring comes.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this,” Mitsu snuffled and whispered to Kiku from her chilly futon. Beside them, Oyone snored soundly and Tome slept curled up like a cat.

  Both Mitsu and Kiku had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring. The third day of the third month was the Spring Festival. On that day, the girls at the Gotōya, with the exception of Oyone, were to be given the special dispensation of a one-day holiday from work. But they had to be back that night to sleep at the shop.

  They arranged for Ichijirō to come and meet them on the morning of the third. Mitsu wanted to go back to Magome for the day, but Kiku had her own ideas.

  “Even if we leave early in the morning, it’ll be past noon before we reach Magome. We won’t have any time to relax. I think it’d be better to go have a look around Nagasaki…. Listen, we could walk around and look at hairpins and tortoiseshell jewelry.”

  The rows of shop fronts in Nagasaki shone lustrously with beautiful hairpins and tortoiseshell jewelry designed to delight young women. Kiku wanted to hold one of them in her own hands and see how it looked in her hair.

  “Ichijirō’s not gonna go for that.” Mitsu looked a bit worried. “He won’t want to go to shops for girls. The only thing he can think about right now is the kite-flying contest.”

  That was true. Although it was an annual event, each new spring the young men of Magome were bursting with excitement to see the Clash of the Kites that would soon be held in Nagasaki.

  Abruptly Kiku stopped the washing she was doing and asked, “Mitsu, why don’t we go see the Temple of the Southern Barbarians?”

  “The what temple?”

  “The Nambanji—the Temple of the Southern Barbarians. It’s a temple for foreigners that they’ve just about finished building in Ōura. I hear that instead of paper doors or lattices to let the light in, they’ve put in colored windows.” Kiku narrowed her eyes and seemed to be imagining what Western colored glass might look like, since she had never seen it. “They say that when the sun shines through, they just sparkle…. It must be so pretty!”

  “Who told you all that?”

  “Doesn’t matter who.”

  “I bet it was Seikichi.”

  Mitsu’s jab made Kiku blush. But she hadn’t heard about the Nambanji from Seikichi. She had overheard customers who came to the shop gossiping about the Southern Barbarian temple with the Master or the clerks.

  “Seikichi doesn’t come by lately. I wonder what’s happened to him?”

  “He’s taken a job in Isahaya. They’re working on some roads over there, and he said the pay is good,” Kiku answered confidently, full of pride that she knew all about Seikichi’s activities.

  It grew warmer. Tinges of green began to burst out on the willows planted along the river. The yellow blossoms of the weeping forsythia started to bloom through fences around the town, and the sounds of people practicing the samisen echoed from inside some of the houses. The coming of spring to Nagasaki was leisurely, even drowsy …

  Finally, the spring Peach Festival, which Mitsu and Kiku had so been looking forward to, arrived on the third day of the third month.

  “He’s still not here! What in the world is he doing?!” Starting at dawn, the two girls dashed out to the front of the shop every time they had a break from their chores, eager for Ichijirō to come for them.

  He finally appeared, having left Magome in the middle of the night in order to accommodate these two.

  Once they had voiced their gratitude to the Mistress for the holiday and said good-bye to Oyone, and with Tome joining them as they left the Gotōya, they felt an indescribable, almost tangible, feeling of liberation and elation. Though they’d been working at the shop for only a month, this was the first time they’d been able to take off an entire day to have fun.

  “Isn’t this wonderful, Tome?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Do you eat futsu dumplings for the festival on Gotō Island, too? Back home in Magome we go around and give futsu dumplings to all our relatives.”

  In Nagasaki, mugwort dumplings were called futsu dumplings. Ichijirō grinned as he listened to the girls’ animated conversation.

  Crowds of people were walking in the warm sunlight. Buddhist priests. Chinese people. The daughters of merchant houses showed up in their finery, accompanied by their mothers and their aged maids. Each was on a pilgrimage to a Buddhist temple or a Shinto shrine.

  From time to time one of the three girls would stop and stare at the kimonos or hairpins of the young women their age who were walking by. Tome and Mitsu gaped with envy, but Kiku looked openly belligerent.

  If I put on makeup, I’d look just as good as they do! Inwardly she was full of self-assurance.

  The three continued walking, then jerked to a halt when they finally reached the shops displaying tortoiseshell jewelry, combs, and hairpins; the blood rushed to their faces, and they swept their eyes intently across each of the items. Ichijirō, left to fend for himself, sat down at the base of a willow beside the shop and absently gazed at the passersby.

  From time to time he would grumble, “That’s long enough. Let’s get going,” but the response was always “Ichijirō, please wait just a little longer.” And so he would wait patiently, thinking, This was a big mistake.

  Eventually the girls had had their fill, and when the four left the shopping area, they decided to head for the celebrated Nambanji.

  “I understand we can’t go inside,” Tome commented, and Kiku, exasperated that the girl knew so little, explained, “The Nambanji is a temple for the Kirishitans. It’s being built for the foreigners, so of course Japanese can’t go in!”

  Today Ōura looks nothing like it did when Kiku and Mitsu first visited there.

  If you walk around the neighborhood of the Ōura Catholic church today, you will occasionally spot one of the old wooden structures built in the Western style back in those days, looking now very much like abandoned houses. All of them were, of course, constructed after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, but in Kiku and Mitsu’s time, several temples, a few houses, and the steeple and chapel of the nearly completed Nambanji peeked out from among the terraced fields, but except for those few structures, the rest of the landscape was unspoiled hills.

  That afternoon when Kiku and her companions went to see the Nambanji, some twenty or thirty curious spectators were standing in front of the church, gaping up at the almost completed building and the terraced fields rising behind it.

  The church, with two small towers on each side and a steeple in front capped with a crucifix, was the very first Christian church that the Japanese had seen since the country had adopted its isolation policy in the 1630s. The Japanese carpenters, who knew essentially nothing about the Western world, had built the church by carefully following the instructions they received from Father Furet.

  “Oh, wow!” As they climbed the slope, Mitsu, Tome, and Kiku all dropped their jaws and looked up at the exotic building.

  “It’s a weird place!” By weird the girls didn’t mean “amusing.” To them, anything they had not seen before puzzled them and got slapped with the label “Weird!”

  “What’s that thing up on top
?” Mitsu asked her brother, pointing to the crucifix atop the steeple.

  “Dunno,” Ichijirō shrugged. A young man next to them who was also examining the building said self-importantly, “It’s a symbol of the Kirishitans.”

  Standing behind the throng of spectators, the four gazed up at the facade of the Nambanji. There were three doorways; above the largest door in the center there was a large window shaped something like a chrysanthemum, and its deep blue glass brilliantly reflected the sunlight.

  “Wow!” Kiku blurted out. “Mitsu, it’s so beautiful!” When she realized how loudly she had shouted, Kiku blushed a bright red, hunched her shoulders, and furtively looked around her.

  But none of the spectators had turned to see where the shout had come from. Every man and woman was staring with wonderment at the unusual building and its stained glass. And there among those faces was …

  Kiku caught her breath. Her eyes widened as she peered from a distance at the face of one young man.

  That must be Seikichi. What’s he doing here? He said he was off working in Isahaya.

  The profile was most certainly Seikichi’s. There could be no doubt. He was gazing up at the cross atop the church, not with astonishment like the other spectators, but with intense concentration.

  “Mitsu!” Kiku tugged at Mitsu’s sleeve and whispered, “Don’t you think that’s Seikichi?”

  “Huh?” Mitsu looked surprised. “I thought he told you he’d gone to Isahaya.” She had a gift for asking the obvious.

  “I’m sure that’s what he said.”

  “Why do you think he lied to you?”

  An inexplicable disappointment gripped Kiku. She felt all the more betrayed because Seikichi was someone she had respected and trusted until now.

  “I have no idea,” she said angrily, quickly turning her face away. But before long she stole another glance at Seikichi.

  Just then a Southern Barbarian wearing a long white robe emerged from one of the side doors of the Nambanji, accompanied by a man who appeared to be one of the magistrate’s officers.

  “I completely understand, Lord Itō,” the foreigner said in surprisingly fluent Japanese.

  “I just ask for your cooperation, Father Furet.” In one hand the officer named Itō carried a bottle of foreign wine, apparently a gift from the priest, and he nodded with exaggerated affability, as though he were conscious of the presence of spectators.

  The Southern Barbarian gave one more polite bow and disappeared back through the door. When Itō came down the stone steps, the observers instinctively retreated a step or two.

  “Now, now … it’s fine for you to look at this place, but you must never go inside. Only foreigners are allowed into this Nambanji. It remains strictly off-limits to Japanese.” He looked condescendingly at the group and then started down the slope with tottering steps. Apparently he had been served some wine while he was inside the Nambanji.

  The main door of the church opened.

  This time a different young foreigner emerged, cradling something in his arms.

  One woman in the crowd whispered to a friend, “That foreigner is the one who takes long walks around Nagasaki.”

  Her friend boasted, “I know. He once asked for some water from the well next to our place. His name is Petitjean, and evidently he’s practicing to compete in the kite contest.”

  As the foreigner called Petitjean climbed down the stone steps, he suddenly displayed the object he was carrying, as though by accident.

  It was a crucifix, the symbol of the Kirishitans, just like the one that decorated the steeple of the church. The gold cross caught the rays of the sun and shone brilliantly in Petitjean’s hands.

  At that moment—

  Kiku realized that Seikichi and a couple of other men and women standing beside him were making some strange sort of gesture. They first placed the thumb of their right hands on their foreheads, then touched their chests, their left shoulders, and finally their right shoulders.

  It happened so quickly that no one but Kiku noticed. Only she had seen their peculiar movements.

  As soon as they finished their strange gestures, Seikichi gave a signal to his comrades. They nodded to one another, swiveled away from Kiku, and quickly separated themselves from the crowd of spectators.

  Kiku’s eyes followed them closely as they disappeared down the sloping path that knit its way between the terraced fields.

  “Miss Kiku, what are you gawking at?” Tome asked. “Do you have a headache? You look pale.”

  “It’s nothing,” Kiku shook her head.

  Seikichi’s lie to her had wounded Kiku’s pride. Even more painful for her, today Seikichi seemed like a totally different person, one she couldn’t connect with. He seemed to Kiku like someone who harbored a secret in which she had no part.

  I’m not having anything more to do with the likes of him. She scowled as if to dispel the image of his face that was still vividly imprinted onto her eyelids.

  Then suddenly she remembered something from her girlhood. It was the scornful manner in which Ichijirō and Granny had talked about the people of Nakano where Seikichi lived. They had spat out the words, “They’re Kuros, you know.” But neither of them had explained what a Kuro was.

  She went over to Ichijirō and asked, “Say, what’s a Kuro?”

  “Kuro.”

  “Yeah.”

  “A Kuro is … well, I’m not really sure. But from what I hear, they’re creepy.”

  “So why do they call people from Nakano Kuros? I don’t think there’s anything creepy about them.”

  “Listen.” Ichijirō suddenly grew suspicious of the reasons for his cousin’s question and said, “The folks in Nakano … they’re just different from us…. People say they do strange things there.”

  “What do you mean by ‘strange’?”

  “Well, for instance, so a baby’s born. I hear they do some kind of secret thing to the baby, and when they do, they absolutely won’t allow anybody from a different village to be there. And they totally refuse to marry someone from another village. And there’s other things, too.”

  “They won’t marry a person from outside their village?” Kiku’s voice rose in volume again.

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Why not?”

  “Cause they’re Kuros. That’s what it means to be a Kuro.”

  Kiku bit her lips and said nothing. Ichijirō’s words had struck her another blow.

  So does that mean Seikichi won’t marry anybody except a girl from Nakano? She wondered to herself. It was a question she couldn’t bring herself to ask Ichijirō.

  Midday was approaching.

  The four sat with their legs stretched out on the shore where the Ōura River flowed into the bay and ate the lunches Ichijirō had brought from Magome.

  Each bento box contained only black rice balls and some pickled vegetables, but since Granny had made it, as they ate they could almost smell their home back in Magome.

  “Kiku.” As Ichijirō sucked up a rice kernel that had stuck to his finger, he asked with concern, “Why are you so quiet?”

  “No reason.” With her palm she scooped up some sand from the shore and shifted her gaze toward the spring ocean. The waves that softly drifted in, then softly broke against the shore with a melancholy sound, were the color of mother-of-pearl. Kiku’s heart, too, felt melancholy. It was a feeling she had hardly ever experienced before today.

  Does every girl feel this miserable when she starts to care about a boy? She asked herself as she played with a pink seashell. Suddenly Mitsu and Tome, who had always seemed so much like her, looked more like younger children to her.

  “Miss Kiku, let’s go find some pretty shells!” Mitsu and Tome stood up and ran barefoot to the edge of the waves. Ichijirō was lying on his back stretched out on the sand, enjoying an after-lunch nap. Mount Inasa was visible through the spring haze, and white sea birds flitted over the surface of the water.

  Oh dear, Kiku sighed. Someo
ne like Mitsu isn’t going to be able to understand how I feel. She’s still so young.

  Being as strong willed as she was, Kiku realized that the next time she saw Seikichi, she was going to have to interrogate him about today’s events. She knew she wouldn’t feel satisfied unless she did.

  For the remainder of the day they paid their respects at the Suwa Shrine,1 had a look at the Sōfukuji Temple built by the Chinese,2 and then Ichijirō escorted the young women back to the Gotōya before the sun set. That concluded their Doll Festival3 activities, a day that was enjoyable for Mitsu and depressing for Kiku. Tomorrow they would resume their busy work schedule.

  That night after they crawled into their futons, Kiku told Mitsu in a whispered voice about the strange gestures she had seen Seikichi make that day.

  “He put his fingers like this up on his head, and then on his chest, and then on both shoulders.”

  “What in the world could that be?” Mitsu looked puzzled.

  But then Tome, who they thought was asleep beside them, suddenly interjected, “I’ve seen some fishermen secretly doing that on the Gotō Islands. When I asked them what they were doing, they laughed and said it was some kind of spell to keep the seas calm.”

  “So it’s a spell, is it?”

  “Seems to be.”

  Kiku was all the more eager to see Seikichi again so she could ask him what kind of spell it was.

  No sooner had the Doll Festival passed than the Kompira Festival was upon them, on the tenth day of the third month. It was the day for the kite competition. Nagasaki is, after all, a city of many amusements and many celebrations.

  Beneath the spring-like sun, men swaggered around Shianbashi with rakish looks on their faces. Their swaggering postures were reminiscent of earlier days in Nagasaki when the “Strolling Song” was popular.

  Above the bridge at Kōyamachi,

  Bands of boys scuffle over the banners

  Flying above their bamboo boats.

  Though five or six men come to quiet them down,

  It may take four or five days.

  Strolling, strolling

  Strolling around Nagasaki.