Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

by Shusaku Endo

  But the realities of life in Japan were not that carefree. By 1864, the collapse of the shogunate was imminent, and the vast changes of the age were pressing like waves on Nagasaki. The common people basking under this spring sun appeared utterly unconcerned about such matters. The “Strolling Song” was still sung to a samisen accompaniment in the pleasure quarters of Maruyama.

  In the seventh year of the Kaei era,

  The year of the tiger, the cycle of the tortoise,

  Russian sailors go sightseeing

  At the harbor battery on Shirō Island.

  Strolling, strolling

  Strolling around Nagasaki.

  Kiku herself was feeling as unsettled as the times. Every day as she swept the storefront at the Gotōya, she fretted that she had still not seen Seikichi go by. Two entire days had passed, and though she heard the calls of other street peddlers, there was no sign of Seikichi.

  “I wonder if he’s still working on the roads at Isahaya?” Gripping the handle of her bamboo broom, she stared incessantly down the long stretch of road. Eventually she was brought to her senses by the scolding cries of either the Mistress or Oyone, “Why are you loitering around? Hurry and start dusting!”

  Another two, then three days passed with no sign of him, and Kiku said to herself in a huff, “I’m having nothing more to do with him. Even if I do see him, I’m saying nothing. I’ll just ignore him.” But she knew when push came to shove she couldn’t ignore him.

  And she was right….

  On the morning of the fourth day, the angry girl heard the voice of a tradesman calling out from the distance, “Taro! Bean sprouts! Daikon!” It was the familiar voice of Seikichi.

  Tightly clutching the handle of her bamboo broom, Kiku narrowed her almond-shaped eyes and glared in the direction from which the voice came. The expression on her face made the still adolescent woman appear startlingly beautiful.

  Seikichi appeared. He recognized Kiku in the morning light and smiled broadly, but Kiku did not so much as grin back at him. She struck a standoffish pose.

  Seikichi took the scale that carried taro and bean sprouts from his shoulder and with a grin spoke to Kiku, “It’s gotten warmer. I’ll bet you’ve been working hard, haven’t you?”

  She was still aloof and coldly responded, “Yes.” She resumed her sweeping and said nothing further.

  At a loss, Seikichi asked, “Need any taro?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, then.” Seikichi hoisted the scale back onto his shoulder and started to leave, but Kiku called out his name and then blurted out, “Seikichi, did you really go to Isahaya to work?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Even on the third? The day of the Doll Festival?”

  Seikichi looked at her apprehensively, so she pressed him, “Are you sure you weren’t having a look at the Nambanji that day?”

  A look of surprise brushed across Seikichi’s face, “How did you know that?”

  “I was there looking at it, too.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you say hello?”

  Kiku was annoyed by the calmness in his voice. Recalling how depressed she had felt that day, and feeling bitter that Seikichi was so clueless about the feelings of the woman he had lied to, she said, “Even if I’d wanted to say hello to you, Seikichi, you left in such a hurry.”

  “Yeah, I wanted to get back to Nakano.”

  “When you were there you made some strange gesture…. What was that?”

  “Strange gesture?”

  Kiku kept her eyes fixed on him as she took her finger and touched her forehead, chest, and both shoulders. It was exactly what Seikichi had done when the foreigner came out of the Nambanji. “That’s what you did, isn’t it?”

  The blood rushed out of Seikichi’s face, and he turned pale. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never did that,” he disavowed feebly.

  “Liar! I saw you with my own eyes!”

  “It wasn’t anything in particular. Probably my head just itched.”

  It was obvious to Kiku that Seikichi was lying. Why did he have to be so dishonest?

  “Liar! That wasn’t what you’d do if your head itched. It looked like some kind of spell to me.” Triumphantly Kiku took a step toward him and, though he was older than she, boldly taunted him, “Seikichi. What’s a Kuro?”

  Seikichi scowled at Kiku but said nothing. It seemed as though the single word had deeply wounded him.

  Kiku hesitated for a moment, but then, as if explaining to herself, “Well, you’re from Nakano, right? In Magome they call people from Nakano Kuros.”

  Seikichi hoisted the scale back onto his shoulder, sighed, “You’re mean,” and began to walk away. There was a loneliness in his retreating figure. Kiku bit her lip and watched intently until that solitary figure had disappeared into the distance.

  She had never imagined this would happen. All she had done was to get angry at Seikichi for telling her that he’d gone to Isahaya to build roads but then come to Nagasaki without even telling her, and she’d merely voiced her indignation to him. If Seikichi had just apologized for irritating her like an older brother would, then she would have calmed down.

  But in a burst of anger she had said the word Kuro to Seikichi and dealt him an utterly unexpected blow.

  “You’re mean,” Seikichi had said bitterly, and then he had walked away.

  Remorse welled up in Kiku’s heart. She had no idea why that word had made Seikichi look so sad. But there was no doubt that she had tactlessly hurt him.

  Seikichi’s angry with me. Now he’s never going to like me. Kiku realized for the first time that her actions had produced the opposite effect to what she had anticipated. She forgot all about her cleaning chores and stood in a daze.

  Gloomy days followed, one after another.

  “Kiku, what’s wrong with you?” Mitsu worriedly asked Kiku, who had fallen into a terrible slump.

  “I … did something so stupid!” Kiku explained every detail of what had happened to Mitsu, but as she confessed the events of that morning it all came back vividly to Kiku’s mind and stabbed at her heart.

  The spring Kompira Festival arrived amid those dismal days, on the tenth day of the third month.

  Management of the Kompira Festival rotated each year among the seven chief neighborhoods in Nagasaki. Though it has declined in popularity today, in Mitsu and Kiku’s day it was one of the liveliest of all the festivals in Nagasaki, whether Shinto or Buddhist.

  On the eve of the festival the shrine precincts were already jammed with pilgrims. Food stalls and booths were crammed together on the grounds and along both sides of the road to the shrine.

  “Let there be good weather tomorrow!” Children and youths pressed their palms together and petitioned Kompira, the great avatar of the sea. Especially since the customary kite competition couldn’t be held if the weather was inclement.

  Thankfully, on the day of the festival the skies were clear and there was a light breeze. It was an ideal day for kite flying.

  On this day, the men who worked at the Gotōya were given permission to go with the Master to Mount Kompira where the Clash of the Kites was held. Some of the larger mercantile houses prepared food and drink and invited their best customers to watch the kite flying to the accompaniment of samisen and drums.

  Because Kiku and Mitsu, along with Tome and other girls, had been allowed to leave the shop for the recent Doll Festival, this time they had to stay at work. Still, if they climbed up onto the wooden racks where clothes were hung out to dry, they were able to see swarms of kites dancing in the sky like flocks of birds.

  “Kiku, come on!” Making sure the Mistress didn’t overhear, Mitsu came to summon Kiku. She was certain that they would earn another tongue-lashing if the Mistress found out they were watching the kite clash on the pretext of hanging clothes out to dry.

  But perhaps the Mistress was willing to wink at what they were doing today because even though Tome and even Oyone had c
ongregated on the drying racks, she wasn’t uttering a word of complaint.

  “Look! There’s a helmeted Brahman!” Oyone, who had lived in Nagasaki for a long while, proudly pointed out one kite swirling in the wind.

  Though they all were called “kites,” those that were entered in the Clash of the Kites were of many different varieties. Each of the kites, with their colorful designs and shapes, had their own names, like “Bald-Headed Priest,” “Footman,” “Bat,” “Paper Door,” “Tiny,” “Flying Fish,” and so on.

  As these various kites now creaked and swooped through the sky, they closed quarters with each other, tangled, stormed at one another, and soared upward or plummeted downward.

  “What do you think? Will that Dutch House at Dejima send up that wicked foreigner’s kite again?” Oyone asked, shifting her body and looking toward Dejima. She told the other girls that for the past two years, a young foreigner had flown a flying-fish kite from the roof of the Dutch trading company and challenged the Japanese kite flyers.

  “It was so humiliating. Not a single kite could beat it.”

  “The foreigner was that good? Where do you suppose he learned how to fly a kite?” Mitsu asked, wide-eyed.

  “Which one of those kites belongs to the foreigner?”

  “He hasn’t sent it up yet. I wonder if he’s not participating this year?” Oyone marveled, but almost immediately she cried, “Oh! He’s up there on the roof!”

  Mitsu and Tome and Kiku turned as one in that direction, forming a row like a flock of society finches.

  Just as Oyone had described it, they could see two Dutchmen sitting on the roof of the Dutch trading company in Dejima, laughing and watching the competition. And they weren’t mere spectators—it was clear from the flying-fish kite they had prepared next to them that they planned to join in the contest.

  Before long the two Dutchmen checked the direction of the wind and began to fly their kite.

  This year it was a pitch-black kite. It was slathered with black ink and bore no other color or decoration. The sinister-colored kite bobbed up and down for a few moments, but it soon caught a current of wind blowing in from the bay.

  The black kite—

  It sailed indolently overhead, as though glaring down at the spectacle below. Its movements seemed to be challenging the other kites in its vicinity, as though it were saying, “Well? Think you can win, do you?”

  The surrounding kites began darting in response to the black kite’s taunts.

  Kiku and the other girls on the drying rack were not the only ones watching this sparring. People walking along the street and those crossing the bridge all stopped in their tracks and lifted their heads to gaze into the sky. Some raised their arms and pointed to the Dutchmen’s kite. It felt as though virtually the entire population of the town had been anticipating this battle.

  For two years now the Japanese residents of Nagasaki had been participating in this contest and had been consistently beaten by the Dutchmen’s kite. They could not imagine where these foreigners had learned their skill or whether they had applied some unusual substance to their kite string, but the fact remained that they were a truly formidable antagonist. Above all else, they were powerful.

  Everyone knew that.

  “This is deplorable.”

  The residents of Nagasaki, unlike other regions of Japan, had, over the course of time, learned to treat foreigners with great respect. They had lived in harmony with both the Dutch in Dejima and the Chinese who had lived here for many years.

  But when it came to these out-and-out competitions, for a fleeting moment they all became patriots. Even the women ground their teeth and grumbled, “Isn’t there anybody who can smash their kite? The men of Nagasaki really are cowards!”

  A kite decorated with two colorful broad stripes surged toward the black kite. Then, like two prizefighters who exchange jabs as they try to assess their opponent’s strengths and likely moves, they gently poked at each other, then pulled back, pulled away then poked again, each competitor watching for the moment of opportunity.

  That opportunity, that skill. Those are what make the difference between victory and loss.

  “NOW!” A man standing on the street suddenly clenched his fists and cried out.

  The two kites coiled and intertwined with each other.

  The man below shouted, “BRAVO!!”

  The kites disengaged and pulled away from each other. The victor had been decided.

  The double-striped kite had been cut loose from its string and was plummeting to the ground. It had lost.

  “Damn!” a group of children barked and then raced off with poles on their shoulders to snag the vanquished kite.

  “Oh no! Oh no!” Oyone groaned.

  Kiku, a sore loser herself, pounded her fists on one of the supports holding up the drying rack.

  1. Suwa is a Shinto shrine originally built in the mid-sixteenth century. During the Christian era when Nagasaki was gifted to the Jesuits, the shrine was destroyed, but it was rebuilt under shogunal orders in 1625.

  2. Sōfukuji, the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan built in the Chinese style, dates to 1629.

  3. Also known as Girls’ Day, the Doll Festival is held every year on March 3.

  A DAY OF HOPE

  PETITJEAN ALSO WAS watching the kite contest. To his side stood Sakichi, his arms folded in evident frustration.

  Sakichi clacked his tongue in disdain and sputtered, “If that’s the way they go in for the attack, it’s no wonder they got their string cut!”

  After the first kite suffered a tragic defeat, another flying-fish kite that had been waiting its turn slid up to the Dutch house’s black kite, seeming to boast, “My turn now!”

  It drew near. It pulled back. It attacked. It looked like a battle to the death between two cuttlefish in the depths of the sea. The colored square kite even resembled the shape of a cuttlefish.

  From time to time Sakichi forgot himself and shouted out, “Hurray!” Despite his cheers, however, one after another the Japanese kites spiraled headlong into the ocean.

  “Mr. Foreigner, what are we going to do?” Sakichi looked nervously at Petitjean. He was hoping to gain some fame for his kite as one foreigner competed against another, but he seemed to be losing confidence. In all honesty, from the time the black kite first climbed into the sky, Petitjean too had concluded he had no chance of winning.

  He had never told Father Furet that he had made a kite at Sakichi’s request or that he had thrown himself into training with it. Were he to be found out, he had no doubt that the priest would be genuinely outraged, as Father Furet was busy preparing to return to France by way of the Ryūkyū Islands.

  “It doesn’t really matter if I win. You made this kite for me, Sakichi. I’d just like to see it fly.” Petitjean pointed to the kite that Sakichi was holding. A Christian cross had been painted on the kite so that onlookers would immediately recognize that its operator was a priest.

  “And you’ve worked really hard to learn how to fly it, Mr. Foreigner,” Sakichi nodded, handing the stick wrapped with kite string to Petitjean. “The wind’s coming in from the ocean. Keep a close eye on shifts in the wind.” Sakichi had repeatedly emphasized to him that he must not rely solely on the strength of the kite to win the battle. If he took advantage of the power of the wind, the potency of the glass-encrusted string would double.

  Slowly, slowly the string Petitjean held in his hands was dragged into the sky. He felt the resistance in his hands as the kite rose above the rooftops and soared upward as though sucked up into the spring sky.

  A kite plainly emblazoned with a scarlet cross. It should be visible from every direction in Nagasaki. If there were in fact any descendants of the Kirishitans in this city, they would surely see this kite painted with a cross. Therein lay Petitjean’s aim.

  The black kite glided languidly above. Like a bald eagle riding the wind currents, his wings spread wide, he ruled the skies over Nagasaki. Compared with him, all the ot
her kites were no better than second-rate birds. And now the flying-fish kite with the scarlet cross was closing in on the eagle.

  “Who’s flying that kite?” Pedestrians below stopped, gazing up at this reckless melee.

  “I hear it belongs to one of the foreigners at the Nambanji. That makes this a battle between foreigners from two different countries. Very interesting!”

  “Really? Foreigner against foreigner?”

  Just as Sakichi had anticipated, at every street corner and along every road, spectators had gathered into small groups and were staring up into the sky. It was a foregone conclusion that the black kite would emerge victorious, but with its drawing so many people’s attention, Sakichi planned to make the rounds afterward and announce, “I made that kite!”

  The kite string transmitted the kite’s groan to Petitjean’s fingers. It seemed almost to be trembling in anticipation of the battle. “Don’t move in yet!” Sakichi, the military strategist, cautioned Petitjean as he checked the strength and direction of the wind. “Not yet! Not yet!!”

  Though it closed in on the black kite, the crucifix kite did not attempt to interlace its strings just yet. Petitjean smoothly let out his string, like a knight desperately restraining a horse that snorts and strains to break into a mad dash.

  It was a battle of patience. The black kite advanced, as though out of patience, but Sakichi calculated the strength of the wind and cried, “Not yet! Not yet!!” He also gauged the direction of the wind. And in a moment he shouted, “Now! NOW, Mr. Foreigner!!”

  With a whoosh the string jerked tight against Petitjean’s index finger. The pain was so intense he wondered whether his finger had been severed.

  “BRAVO!!” Sakichi yelled out. The two tangled kites moved apart at that instant.

  The black kite was wobbling. The kite bearing the scarlet crucifix pulled away from it.

  The spectators at the crossroads cried out in one voice, “The black kite has lost!!”

  But that wasn’t the case. It was the kite with the scarlet crucifix that plummeted to the ground. It was Petitjean’s kite….

  Petitjean offered some words of encouragement to a downcast Sakichi, but he himself was satisfied with the outcome. He cared nothing about victory. His purpose had been to get a kite with a crucifix floating in the skies over Nagasaki. If any of them had seen it, it must have given them a great deal of courage. That was sufficient.