Death at the Crossroads

       
DEATH
   AT THE
CROSSROADS

          
DALE FURUTANI

            
A SAMURAI MYSTERY

© 1998, 2011 Dale Furutani Flanagan. All rights reserved.

His life was marked by an abiding faith, a loving heart, a generous spirit, and a wonderful sense of adventure.

But it was extinguished much too soon.

We miss him.

T
he idea for this trilogy was conceived while I was sitting in a seventeenth-century Japanese farmhouse in the Sankei-en garden in Yokohama. I was sipping a steaming cup of green tea and marveling at floorboards worn glass smooth by centuries of bare feet crossing them. It occurred to me that in fiction about ancient Japan, the people who lived in that farmhouse were often just stage props to some greater pageantry, such as the fight to become the Shogun. Yet they also had stories to tell, and I decided to tell at least some of them through the vehicle of a mystery trilogy.

Having chosen the actors, my next decision was to select the time of the action. To most Japanese, the year 1603 has the same familiarity to it as the year 1776 has to Americans; 1603 is the year Tokugawa Ieyasu declared himself to be Shogun of Japan, and it marked a turning point in Japanese history. For the next 250 years, Japanese culture, politics, and the social order were regulated by the oppressive hand of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This period has been covered by many works of fiction and nonfiction, but I was interested in the hinge of history—that brief period when an entire nation was in the midst of a pervasive and profound change, before the Tokugawa Shogunate had extended its tentacles into every aspect of Japanese life.

My intent is to write this trilogy as entertainment. To the best of my ability, I’ve tried to be accurate in my rendition of Japanese life
in 1603, but I’ve obviously had to take some liberties in the interest of creating a work of fiction.

For instance, seventeenth-century Japanese, like seventeenth-century English, would sound stilted and strange to modern ears if translated faithfully. In addition, Japanese court language, with its stentorian cadence, would soon grow tiresome to read if carried throughout a book. For these reasons, I’ve tried to give a bit of the flavor of the speech patterns while using modern dialogue.

I hope these concessions to telling my story won’t introduce anachronisms or offend scholars whose knowledge of this period far exceeds mine.

—D
ALE
F
URUTANI

I
n this book, names follow the Japanese convention, in which the family name is listed first, then the given name. Therefore, in “Matsuyama Kaze,” Matsuyama is the family name and Kaze the given name.

Aoi
, the village prostitute

Boss Kuemon
, the bandit chief

Hachiro
, a young man who is part of Boss Kuemon’s gang

Ichiro
, the headman for Suzaka village

Jiro
, the charcoal seller

Manase
, Lord of the District

Matsuyama Kaze
, a ronin samurai

Nagahara Munehisa
, a Sensei (teacher) who studies Heian Japan

Nagato Takamasu
, the District Magistrate

Okubo
, a boyhood acquaintance of Kaze’s

The Sensei
, Kaze’s mentor

SUZAKA VILLAGE AND SURROUNDING AREA

DEATH AT
THE CROSSROADS

Japan, the Sixteenth Year of Emperor Go-Yozei (1603)

“A
re you ready to die?”

The young
samurai
’s face was a mask of anger, and spittle flew from his mouth as he issued his challenge. Three of the other four passengers in the tiny boat hugged the gunwales, bent back by the young swordsman’s words. The fourth, the object of the samurai’s fury, sat calmly at the back of the boat, near the oarsman, who had stopped rowing as the confrontation started to escalate.

“Well? Why won’t you answer? I am a student of the Yagyu school of swordsmanship, and I have challenged you!”

The muscular man in the back of the boat took the time to wipe a bit of spit that had landed on the back of his hand with the sleeve of his
kimono
before answering. His other hand held a single
katana
, a samurai’s sword, in a plain black scabbard. He was clearly a samurai, but his head wasn’t shaved in samurai fashion, and he had the appearance of a
ronin
, a masterless samurai who wandered about looking for employment.

A few moments before, a group of five had gathered by the river-bank to be ferried across the stream: two samurai, two peasants, and
a merchant, all thrown together by their common need to cross the river. Instead of politely introducing himself to the older samurai, the youth had immediately started talking about his training in the Yagyu style of fencing and his prowess with the sword. At first the peasants and merchant had found the talk entertaining, because skill with a sword was valued above all else in a warrior culture. But soon after embarking on the voyage across the river, the youth had become increasingly boastful of his swordsmanship, asking the other samurai to confirm that the Yagyu school of fencing was the greatest in the land. When the middle-aged samurai remained silent, the youth had become agitated, taking the older man’s silence as a judgment on both his school and his own skill as a swordsman. Standing in the bow of the flat-bottomed boat, the young samurai faced the older man, his hand on the hilt of one of the two swords stuck in his sash.

“Why don’t you answer? Are you ready to die?” the young man screamed.

The other warrior looked at the aggressive samurai thoughtfully, his thick black eyebrows furrowing together into a V. He said, “A true samurai is always ready to die. But I am from a quite different school of fencing. Like Tsukahara Bokuden, I am from the ‘No Sword’ school of fencing, and I am quite certain a man of your character can be defeated by it.”

“No Sword?” the young man repeated. “That’s ridiculous! How can a samurai fight with no sword? Now you have pushed me beyond tolerance! I demand that this impudent insult be cleansed with blood. I challenge you to a duel.”

“All right,” said the older man. He pointed to a small island in the middle of the stream. “Boatman, stop there. It’s a good place for a duel.”

Nodding, but with fear on his face, the boatman sculled the boat toward the island. He stood at the end of the boat, both propelling and steering it with a single, two-piece oar that trailed the boat like the tail on a fish. When the boat hit the shore, the young man leaped out of the boat and landed on the sandy shore of the island. He
immediately drew his katana, ran a few feet onto the island, and took an aggressive stance, with both hands on the hilt and the blade in the “aimed at the eye” position.

“Come on!” he shouted to the samurai in the boat. “Let’s see if this ridiculous No Sword school of fencing can defeat one who has studied with the Yagyu!”

The other man calmly stood up and handed his sword to the boatman. “Here, hold this,” he said. “For this duel I truly need no sword.”

The boatman clumsily reached out for the sword, releasing his grip on the oar as he did so. Before the oar could clatter to the bottom of the boat, the samurai caught it, lifted it out of the guides in the back of the boat that held it in place when it was used for steering and propulsion, and used it to push the boat away from the island.

“What are you doing!” the youth screamed.

“I am defeating you with the No Sword school of fencing. If you had truly studied with the Yagyu, you would know that fencing is more than just killing people; it is developing all your faculties, including your mind. Now, because of your stupidity and without using my sword, I can continue my journey and also eliminate the impediment of a troublesome character.”

The boat was away from the island and moving with the current before the young samurai could get back to the shore. “I think a cold swim will be excellent training for you,” the older man shouted as the youth started running along the shore. “Just as a bucket of cold water will dampen the ardor of amorous dogs, a dose of cold water will also be good for a young man too full of himself for his own good and the good of others.”

The swiftly flowing stream drew the boat away from the island at an increasing pace and, before the young man reached the final spit of land on the tiny island, the boat was much too far away to catch. Too angry to speak, the young man jumped about in rage in ankle-deep water, waving his sword and watching the boat draw away from him. He heard the sound that all samurai, caught up in their importance
and honor, dreaded: The occupants of the boat were laughing at him.

J
iro the charcoal seller had many things on his mind, but death was not one of them. He was late, and his regular customers would scold him if they had to use branches and twigs in their
hibachi
instead of charcoal to heat water for their morning tea. Worse yet, if the Lord’s household needed charcoal, Jiro would be beaten if he wasn’t there to provide it. The Lord was neither patient nor understanding. Several villagers had felt the cudgels of the Lord’s men, and Jiro was not anxious to join their number.

Around him, mist clung tenaciously to the jagged folds that formed the ravines and valleys of the mountains. Through the low-lying white haze, the ragged black pines and reddish cryptomeria poked through the white curtain, looking like some enigmatic calligraphy of the gods, a message written with the slashing brush strokes of trunks and branches on a shifting silver paper.

The sun had been in the sky for half an hour, but its beams had not yet penetrated to the bottom of the steep-sided valley. In the blue gloom of this extended dawn, Jiro padded along a narrow trail, finding his way by habit and instinct as much as by sight.

Hung on his back was an enormous woven basket filled with charcoal. The basket was draped from his shoulders by twisted ropes made of summer grass and padded with torn-up rags. A line reached from the basket to a headband to help stabilize the load and to bear some of the weight. Jiro was naked except for a homespun loincloth, but despite the chill of the mountains and the morning, he was sweating from his steady run with a heavy load.

Pad, pad, pad … His naked feet, encrusted with an armor of horny calluses built over a fifty-year life span, slapped against the dirt of the trail, forming a gentle rhythm that complemented Jiro’s rolling gait. He used the oscillation of the weighty basket to help him down the path, shifting the weight first to one side, then the other, calling on his long years of experience to work with the pendulum forces of
momentum instead of fighting them. This was a metaphor for how Jiro dealt with life. Every Japanese child was given the example of how the flexible bamboo could survive a storm that would snap a rigid tree, and they were admonished to follow this example.

He was making good time. Perhaps he wouldn’t be too late after all.

In his mind he started practicing a speech. By nature he was a taciturn man, but his part-time profession of selling charcoal in the small village of Suzaka forced him to communicate with his customers. That was sometimes the hardest part of having his small charcoal business, because words did not come easily to Jiro’s mind or tongue. When he wasn’t selling charcoal, he was farming, and he much preferred the life of the soil to the life of commerce.

With farming he could go for days without making a sound, save for the occasional grunt as he dug his hoe into an especially stubborn piece of earth. The tender green shoots only required a gentle touch, sunlight, and water to respond with their bounty, and oily words were not necessary for their growth. The birds and rabbits were startled by raucous human speech, and Jiro’s habitual silence allowed him to glide in and out of their world with little or no interruption. When a man talked, he couldn’t listen to the subtle rustle of tall grass bending in the quickening breeze or the frothing music of a nearby stream. With so much to listen to, Jiro had no problems being silent. It was communicating with humans that always challenged him.

Because he was such a quiet man, Jiro always marveled that he had managed to marry Yuko. In fact, however, his marriage had been arranged with almost no words spoken, at least on Jiro’s part.

Jiro’s mother died less than a year after his father, when Jiro was still a teenager, so the elder women of the village took it into their hands to arrange a wife for the young man. In an agrarian village, the men and women worked as a unit, and it was simply taken for granted that Jiro would need a wife, even if he was taking no action to get one. In a cultured family, the marriage would have been arranged through intermediaries, complete with subtle hints, a
“chance” meeting, and formal matchmakers, but in the rough life of the village, it was handled more directly, while the elder women sat around weaving straw sandals.

A bundle of straw was taken and twisted into a skein. Then the skein was plaited with others, forming a rough base for a sandal. Then cord or strips of rag were used to form ties for the sandal. Despite its rough appearance, the resulting footwear was surprisingly durable and comfortable. This was done as a community project by the older women of the village. It had a utilitarian product as its output in the form of the sandals, but a more important function was the chance for an informal council among the women who wielded considerable influence in the village.

“Who shall we get for Jiro?” one of the elder women of the village asked bluntly, grabbing a fist full of straw.

“There aren’t too many choices,” said another, repeating what they all knew anyway.

“What about the daughter of the barrel maker?” another mused, throwing out a trial candidate.

“She is a tart,” Elder Grandma, the oldest matriarch in the village, said bluntly. “Jiro will have a hard enough time without his mother there. Any wife who doesn’t have a strong mother-in-law can be trouble, and that girl will be a handful even with a strong woman to guide her.”

“How about my daughter?” Yuko’s mother said quietly. As a suggestion for a match, it was explosive. The other women were flabbergasted. Gnarled hands stopped the plaiting of straw into sandals. Faces creased and weathered brown from years of working in the sun took on expressions of surprise and even shock.

Jiro was not handsome, and his family’s plot of land was far from the biggest, so it was astounding that Yuko’s mother had let it be known that her daughter was available. Yuko was one of the prettiest girls in the small village, although at age fifteen she was a bit past the average age when girls got married. The natural assumption was that
Yuko’s mother was waiting for an exceptional match for her daughter, perhaps even hoping that the pretty girl would catch the eye of a lord or samurai so she could become a rich man’s concubine.

The other village women considered Yuko far too clever and far too pretty for Jiro, and said so. But Yuko’s mother had seen kindness and a good heart and a hard worker in the young man, and she knew it would be a match where Yuko would not be abused and, most likely, would be in charge. She wanted that, because of all of her eight children, Yuko was the favorite.

Jiro was presented with the proposition of Yuko as a wife by a small delegation of village women showing up at his hut one morning before he went to his rice paddy to work. The bewildered teen, still smarting from the death of his parents, simply accepted the collective wisdom of the elder women of the village and nodded his agreement. Within a few days, there was a small wedding feast, where the people of the village were fed
sake, tofu
, and some fish. Yuko served the feast and made sure each of the guests went home with a bit of food wrapped in a broad leaf. After cleaning up, Yuko moved into Jiro’s hut, and they were tentatively considered married, pending the birth of their first child.

Although smart, Yuko wasn’t talkative herself, and she and Jiro made an excellent match. Through the shared communion of their silence, they went through the stages of awkward adjustment, awakening sexual enthusiasm, then love and friendship. The elder women of the village soon looked upon the bond developed by the couple with proprietary pride, a symbol of their matchmaking abilities, forgetting their initial skepticism over the union of the pretty girl and the awkward farmer.

Starting the charcoal-selling business as a sideline to farming was Yuko’s idea. Yuko was always a thinker, and prior to Jiro’s going into business, the people of Suzaka village would have to make the long journey into the mountains to seek out charcoal sellers themselves. It was a constant source of complaint among the women, and in this
complaint Yuko saw opportunity. She decided that by charging a small amount, a neat profit could be made without the others in the village feeling that she and Jiro had become like greedy merchants.

At first, Jiro thought he was incapable of operating this small sideline. He was strong enough and hardy enough to go into the mountains to get the charcoal, but selling it was something else. Charcoal selling, like all village selling, involved a whole symphony of speech. First was the shouting: walking through the village with the basket and singing out, “Charcoal! Fine charcoal!” Jiro actually didn’t mind this part because it wasn’t directed to anyone in particular. But next he was expected to make real conversation. When a woman heard his call and emerged from a hut with a basket or pot for the charcoal, she expected entertainment, not just goods.