Musashi: Bushido Code (131 page)

The man plunged on past Gonnosuke to the road on the other side of the bridge. Turning around, he took a solid stance, his legs resembling small tree trunks. Gonnosuke saw it was the priest who had been following him the previous day.

"Who are you?" shouted Gonnosuke.

The priest said nothing.

Gonnosuke moved his staff into striking position and shouted, "Who are you? What reason do you have for attacking Musō Gonnosuke?"

The priest acted as if he hadn't heard. His eyes spat fire as his toes, protruding from heavy straw sandals, inched forward like a centipede in motion.

Gonnosuke growled and cursed under his breath. His short, heavy limbs bursting with the will to fight, he too inched forward.

The priest's staff broke in two with a resounding crack. One part flew through the air; the other the priest hurled with all his might at Gonnosuke's face. It missed, but while Gonnosuke was recovering his balance, his opponent drew his sword and stomped out onto the bridge.

"You bastard!" shouted Iori.

The priest gasped and put his hand to his face. The small stones Iori had thrown had found their mark, one hitting him squarely in the eye. He spun around and ran down the road.

"Stop!" shouted Iori, scrambling up the bank with a handful of stones.

"Never mind," said Gonnosuke, putting his hand on Iori's arm.

"I guess that'll show him," gloated Iori, casting the stones toward the moon.

Soon after they returned to Tōroku's house and went to bed, a squall came up. The wind roared through the trees, threatening to tear the roof off the house, but this was not the only thing that kept them from falling asleep right away.

Gonnosuke lay awake thinking about past and present, wondering if the world was really better off now than it had been in bygone ages. Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu had won the hearts of the people, as well as the authority to govern, but, he wondered, hadn't the true sovereign been virtually forgotten, the people led to worship false gods? The age of the Hōjōs and Ashikagas had been a hateful one, blatantly contradicting the very principle on which the country was founded. Still, even then, great warriors, like Masashige and his son, and loyalists from many provinces had followed the true warrior's code. What had become of the Way of the Samurai? Gonnosuke asked himself. Like the Way of the Townsman and the Way of the Farmer, it seemed to exist now only for the sake of the military ruler.

Gonnosuke's thoughts made his body feel warm all over. The peaks of Kawachi, the woods around the Kongōji, the howling storm, seemed to become living beings, calling to him in a dream.

Iori could not get the unknown priest out of his mind. He was still thinking of the ghostly white figure much later when the storm intensified. He pulled the covers over his eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When they set out the next day, the clouds above the mountains were rainbow-colored. Just outside the village, a traveling merchant materialized from the morning mist and wished them a jovial good morning.

Gonnosuke replied perfunctorily. Iori, absorbed in the thoughts that had kept him awake the night before, was no more talkative.

The man tried to strike up a conversation. "You stayed at Tōroku's house last night, didn't you? I've known him for years. Fine people, him and his wife."

This elicited only a mild grunt from Gonnosuke.

"I also call at Koyagyū Castle from time to time," said the merchant. "Kimura Sukekurō had done me a lot of favors."

This met with another grunt.

"I see you've been to the 'Women's Mount Kōya.' I suppose now you'll be going to Mount Kōya itself. It's just the right time of the year. The snow's gone, and all the roads have been repaired. You can take your time crossing Amami and Kiimi passes, spend the night at Hashimoto or Kamuro—"

The man's probing about their itinerary made Gonnosuke suspicious. "What business are you in?" he asked.

"I sell braided cord," said the man, pointing to the small bundle on his back. "The cord's made of flat-braided cotton. It was only invented recently, but it's getting popular fast."

"I see," said Gonnosuke.

"Tōroku's helped me a lot, telling worshipers at the Kongōji about my cord. As a matter of fact, I was planning to stay at his house last night, but he said he already had two guests. That was sort of a disappointment. When I stay with him, he always fills me up with good sake." He laughed.

Relaxing a bit, Gonnosuke began asking questions about places along the way, for the merchant was quite familiar with the local countryside. By the time they reached Amami plateau, the conversation had grown fairly friendly.

"Hey, Sugizō!"

A man came trotting along the road to catch up with them.

"Why did you go off and leave me? I was waiting at Amano Village. You said you'd stop by for me."

"Sorry, Gensuke," said Sugizō. "I fell in with these two and we got to talking. I forgot all about you." He laughed and scratched his head.

Gensuke, who was dressed like Sugizō, turned out to be a cord salesman too. As they walked, the two merchants fell to discussing business.

Coming to a gully about twenty feet deep, Sugizō suddenly stopped talking and pointed.

"Oh, that's dangerous," he said.

Gonnosuke stopped and looked at the gully, which might have been a gap left by an earthquake, perhaps one that happened a very long time ago. "What seems to be the trouble?" he asked.

"Those logs, they're not safe to cross. See, there—some of the rocks supporting them have been washed away. We'll fix it so the logs are steady." Then he added, "We should do that for the sake of other travelers."

Gonnosuke watched as they squatted at the edge of the cliff and began packing rocks and dirt under the logs. While thinking that these two merchants traveled a great deal, and thus knew the difficulties of travel as well as anybody, he was a little surprised. It was unusual for men like them to care enough about others to go to the trouble of repairing a bridge.

Iori didn't give the matter any thought. Impressed by their show of concern, he contributed by gathering rocks for them.

"That should do it," said Gensuke. He took a step on the bridge, decided it was safe and said to Gonnosuke, "I'll go first." Holding his arms out for balance, he crossed quickly to the other side, then beckoned for the others to follow.

At Sugizō's urging, Gonnosuke went next, Iori just behind him. They were not quite to the middle when they let out a shout of surprise. Ahead of them, Gensuke had a lance pointed at them. Gonnosuke looked back and saw Sugizō had also acquired a lance.

"Where did the lances come from?" thought Gonnosuke. He swore, bit his lip angrily and considered the awkwardness of his position.

"Gonnosuke, Gonnosuke . . ." Taken off guard, Iori clung to Gonnosuke's waist, while Gonnosuke, holding his arm around the boy, shut his eyes for an instant, entrusting his life to the will of heaven.

"You bastards!"

"Shut up!" shouted the priest, who stood higher up on the road, behind Gensuke, his left eye swollen and black.

"Keep calm," Gonnosuke told Iori in a soothing voice. Then he shouted. "So you're behind this! Well, watch out, you thieving bastards! You've tangled with the wrong man this time!"

The priest stared coldly at Gonnosuke. "You're not worth robbing. We know that. If you're no smarter than that, what are you doing trying to be a spy?" "You calling me a spy?"

"Tokugawa dog! Throw that staff away. Put your hands behind your back. And don't try anything funny."

"Ah!" sighed Gonnosuke, as though the will to fight was deserting him. "Look, you're making a mistake. I did come from Edo, but I'm not a spy. My name is Musō Gonnosuke. I'm a
shugyōsha ."

"Never mind the lies."

"What makes you think I'm a spy?"

"Our friends in the east told us some time ago to be on the lookout for a man traveling with a young boy. You were sent down here by Lord Hōjō of Awa, weren't you?"

"No."

"Drop the staff and come along peacefully."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"Then you'll die right here."

Gensuke and Sugizō began to close in from front and back, lances ready for action.

To keep Iori out of harm's way, Gonnosuke slapped him on the back. With a loud shriek, Iori dived into the bushes covering the bottom of the gully. Thundering "Y-a-a-h!" Gonnosuke rushed Sugizō.

The lance requires some space and good timing to be effective. Sugizō extended his arm to thrust his weapon forward but missed the exact moment. A loud croak came from his throat as the blade cut through thin air. Gonnosuke slammed into him, and he fell backward, with Gonnosuke on top of him. When Sugizō attempted to rise, Gonnosuke rammed his right fist into his face. Sugizō bared his teeth but the effect was ludicrous, for his face was already a bloody mess. Gonnosuke stood up, used Sugizō's head for a springboard and cleared the distance to the end of the bridge.

Staff poised, he shouted, "I'm here waiting, you cowards!"

Even as he shouted, three ropes came slithering across the top of the grass, one weighted with a sword guard, another with a short sword in its scabbard. One rope looped around Gonnosuke's arm, another around his legs and the third around his neck. In a moment, still another rope wound around his staff.

Gonnosuke wriggled like an insect caught in a spiderweb, but not for long. Half a dozen men ran out of the woods behind him. By the time they were finished, he lay helpless on the ground, trussed up tighter than a bundle of straw. With the exception of the surly priest, all his captors were dressed as cord salesmen.

"No horses?" asked the priest. "I don't want to walk him all the way to Mount Kudo."

"We can probably hire a horse in Amami Village."

A Pear Blossom

In the dark, solemn forest of cryptomerias, the voices of the lowly shrike, mingling with those of the celestial bulbul, sounded like the jeweled tones of the mythical Kalavinka bird.

Two men, coming down from the top of Mount Kōya, where they had visited the halls and pagodas of the Kongōbuji and paid their respects at the inner shrine, stopped on a small arched bridge between the inner and outer temple precincts.

"Nuinosuke," said the older man pensively, "the world is indeed fragile and impermanent, isn't it?" From his heavy homespun cloak and utilitarian
hakama,
he might have been taken for a country samurai, were it not for his swords, which were of outstanding quality, and the fact that his companion was far too suave and well-groomed for a provincial samurai's attendant.

"You saw them, didn't you?" he continued. "The graves of Oda Nobunaga, Akechi Mitsuhide, Ishida Mitsunari, Kobayakawa Kingo—all brilliant, famous generals only a few years ago. And over there, those moss-covered stones mark the burial places of great members of the Minamoto and Taira clans."

"Friend and foe ... all together here, aren't they?"

"All of them nothing more than lonely stones. Were names like Uesugi and Takeda really great, or were we only dreaming?"

"It gives me an odd feeling. Somehow it seems the world we live in is unreal."

"Is it that? Or is it this place that's unreal?"

"Umm. Who knows?"

"Who do you suppose thought of calling this the Bridge of Illusions?" "It's a well-chosen name, isn't it?"

"I think illusion is truth, just as enlightenment is reality. If illusion were unreal, the world couldn't exist. A samurai who devotes his life to his master cannot—not for an instant—allow himself to be nihilistic. That's why the Zen I practice is living Zen. It's the Zen of the tainted world, the Zen of hell. A samurai who trembles at the thought of impermanence or despises the world cannot perform his duties.... Enough of this place. Let's go back to the other world."

He walked quickly, with a remarkably firm step for a man of his age.

Catching sight of priests from the Seiganji, he frowned and grumbled, "Why did they have to do that?" He'd stayed at the temple the night before; now about twenty young priests were lined up along the pathway, waiting to see him off, though he had said his farewells that mornings with the intention of avoiding a display of this sort.

He ran the gauntlet, saying polite good-byes, and hurried on down the road overlooking the patchwork of valleys known as Kujūkutani. Only when he regained the ordinary world did he relax. Conscious as he was of his own fallible human heart, the odor of this world came as relief.

"Hello, who are you?" The question came at him like a shot as they rounded a bend in the road.

"Who are you?" asked Nuinosuke.

The well-built, light-complexioned samurai standing in the middle of the road said politely, "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but aren't you Lord Hosokawa Tadatoshi's senior retainer, Nagaoka Sado?"

"I'm Nagaoka, to be sure. Who are you, and how did you know I was in the vicinity?"

"My name is Daisuke. I'm the only son of Gessō, who lives in retirement on Mount Kudo."

Seeing the name did not ring a bell, Daisuke said, "My father has long since discarded his former name, but until the Battle of Sekigahara he was known as Sanada Saemonnosuke."

"Do you mean Sanada Yukimura?"

"Yes, sir." With a bashfulness seemingly at odds with his appearance, Daisuke said, "A priest from the Seiganji dropped in at my father's house this morning. He said you'd come to Mount Kōya for a short visit. Though we heard you were traveling incognito, my father thought it'd be a pity not to invite you to have a cup of tea with him."

"That's very kind of him," replied Sado. He squinted for a minute, then said to Nuinosuke, "I think we ought to accept, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," replied Nuinosuke without enthusiasm.

Daisuke said, "It's still fairly early in the day, but my father would be honored if you'd spend the night with us."

Sado hesitated a moment, wondering if it was wise to accept the hospitality of a man regarded as an enemy of the Tokugawas, then nodded and said, "We can decide about that later, but I'll be delighted to join your father for a cup of tea. Don't you agree, Nuinosuke?"

"Yes, sir."

Nuinosuke seemed a bit on edge, but as they started down the road behind Daisuke, master and attendant exchanged knowing glances.

From the village of Mount Kudo, they climbed a little farther up the mountain to a residence set apart from the other houses. The enclosure, surrounded by a low stone wall topped by a fence of woven grass, resembled the semi-fortified house of a lesser provincial warlord, but all in all one got the impression of refinement rather than military preparedness.

"My father's over there, by that thatched building," said Daisuke as they went through the gate.

There was a small vegetable garden, sufficient to provide onions and greens for the morning and evening soup. The main house stood in front of a cliff; near the side veranda was a bamboo grove, beyond which two more houses were just visible.

Nuinosuke knelt on the veranda outside the room Sado was shown to. Sado sat down and remarked, "It's very quiet here."

A few minutes later, a young woman who appeared to be Daisuke's wife quietly served tea and left.

While Sado waited for his host, he took in the view—the garden and the valley. Below was the village, and in the distance the inn town of Kamuro. Tiny flowers bloomed on the moss clinging to the overhanging thatched roof, and there was the pleasant fragrance of a rare incense. Though he could not see it, he could hear the stream running through the bamboo grove.

The room itself evoked a feeling of quiet elegance, a gentle reminder that the owner of this unpretentious dwelling was the second son of Sanada Masayuki, lord of Ueda Castle and recipient of an income of 190,000 bushels.

The posts and beams were thin, the ceiling low. The wall behind the small, rustic alcove was of roughly finished red clay. The flower arrangement in the alcove consisted of a single sprig of pear blossoms in a slender yellow and light green ceramic vase. Sado thought of Po Chü-i's "solitary pear blossom bathed by the spring rain" and of the love that united the Chinese emperor and Yang Kuei-fei, as described in the
Chang He Ke.
He seemed to hear a voiceless sob.

His eye moved to the hanging scroll above the flower arrangement. The characters, large and naive, spelled out "Hōkoku Daimyōjin," the name Hideyoshi was given when he was elevated to the rank of a god after his death. To one side, a notation in much smaller characters said that this was the work of Hideyoshi's son Hideyori at the age of eight. Feeling it discourteous to Hideyoshi's memory to have his back turned to the scroll, Sado shifted a little to the side. As he did so, he realized suddenly that the pleasant smell came not from incense burning right then but from the walls and shoji, which must have absorbed the fragrance when incense was placed there morning and evening to purify the room in Hideyoshi's honor. Presumably an offering of sake was also made daily, as to established Shinto deities.

"Ah," he thought, "Yukimura's as devoted to Hideyoshi as they say." What he could not fathom was why Yukimura did not hide the scroll. He had the reputation of being an unpredictable man, a man of the shadows, lurking and waiting for a propitious moment to return to the center of the country's affairs. It took no stretch of the imagination to conceive of guests later reporting his sentiments to the Tokugawa government.

Footsteps approached along the outside corridor. The small, thin man who entered the room wore a sleeveless cloak, with only a short sword in the front of his obi. There was an air of modesty about him.

Dropping to his knees and bowing to the floor, Yukimura said, "Forgive me for sending my son to bring you and for interrupting your journey."

This show of humility made Sado uncomfortable. From the legal viewpoint, Yukimura had given up his status. He was now only a rōnin who had taken the Buddhist name Denshin Gessō. Nevertheless, he was the son of Sanada Masayuki, and his older brother, Nobuyuki, was a daimyō and had close connections with the Tokugawas. Being only a retainer, Sado was of much lower rank.

"You shouldn't bow to me that way," he said, returning the greeting. "It's an unexpected honor and pleasure to meet you again. I'm glad to see you're in good health."

"You seem to be too," replied Yukimura, relaxing while Sado was still bowing. "I'm pleased to hear Lord Tadatoshi has returned to Buzen safely."

"Thank you. This is the third year since Lord Yūsai passed away, so he thought it was time."

"Has it been that long?"

"Yes. I've been in Buzen myself, though I have no idea what use Lord Tadatoshi might have for a relic like myself. I served his father and grandfather too, as you know."

When the formalities were over and they began talking of this and that, Yukimura asked, "Have you seen our Zen master recently?"

"No, I've seen or heard nothing of Gudō for some time. That reminds me, it was in his meditation room that I first saw you. You were only a boy then, and you were with your father." Sado smiled happily as he reminisced about the time he had been put in charge of constructing the Shumpoin, a building the Hosokawas had donated to the Myōshinji.

"A lot of hellions came to Gudō to get the rough edges smoothed off," said Yukimura. "He accepted them all, not caring whether they were old or young, daimyō or rōnin."

"Actually, I think he particularly liked young rōnin," mused Sado. "He used to say that a true rōnin did not seek fame or profit, did not curry favor with the powerful, did not attempt to use political power for his own ends, did not exempt himself from moral judgments. Rather he was as broad-minded as floating clouds, as quick to act as the rain and quite content in the midst of poverty. He never set himself any targets and never harbored any grudges."

"You remember that after all these years?" asked Yukimura.

Sado nodded ever so slightly. "He also maintained that a true samurai was as hard to find as a pearl in the vast blue sea. The buried bones of the innumerable rōnin who sacrificed their lives for the good of the country he likened to pillars supporting the nation." Sado looked straight into Yukimura's eyes as he said this, but the latter did not seem to notice the allusion to men of his own adopted status.

"That reminds me," he said. "One of the rōnin who sat at Gudō's feet in those days was a young man from Mimasaka named Miyamoto ..." "Miyamoto Musashi?"

"That's it, Musashi. He impressed me as being a man of great depth, even though he was only about twenty at the time, and his kimono was always filthy."

"It must be the same man."

"Then you do remember him?"

"No; I didn't hear of him until recently, when I was in Edo."

"He's a man to watch. Gudō said that his approach to Zen was promising, so I kept an eye on him. Then he suddenly disappeared. A year or two later, I heard he'd won a brilliant victory against the House of Yoshioka. I remember thinking at the time that Gudō must have a very good eye for people."

"I came across him quite by accident. He was in Shimōsa and gave some villagers a lesson in how to protect themselves from bandits. Later he helped them turn a tract of wasteland into paddy."

"I think he may be the true rōnin Gudō had in mind—the pearl in the vast blue sea."

"Do you really think so? I recommended him to Lord Tadatoshi, but I'm afraid finding him is as hard as discovering a pearl. One thing you can be sure of. If a samurai like that took an official position, it wouldn't be for the sake of the income. He'd be concerned with how his work measured up to his ideals. It may be that Musashi would prefer Mount Kudo to the House of Hosokawa."

"What?"

Sado brushed off his remark with a short laugh, as if it were a slip of the tongue.

"You're joking, of course," said Yukimura. "In my present circumstances, I can hardly afford to hire a servant, let alone a well-known rōnin. I doubt whether Musashi would come even if I did invite him."

"There's no need to deny it," said Sado. "It's no secret the Hosokawas are on the side of the Tokugawas. And everybody knows you are the support on which Hideyori leans most heavily. Looking at the scroll in the alcove, I was impressed by your loyalty."

Seemingly offended, Yukimura said, "The scroll was given to me by a certain person at Osaka Castle in lieu of a memorial portrait of Hideyoshi. I try to take good care of it. But Hideyoshi is dead." He swallowed and went on. "Times change, of course. It doesn't take an expert to see that Osaka has fallen on bad days, while the power of the Tokugawas continues to grow. But I'm not able by nature to change my loyalty and serve a second lord."

"I wonder if people will believe it's that simple. If I may speak candidly, everybody says Hideyori and his mother furnish you great sums every year and at a wave of the hand you could muster five or six thousand rōnin."

Yukimura laughed deprecatingly. "Not a word of truth in it. I tell you, Sado, there's nothing worse than having people make you out to be more than you are."

"You can't blame them. You went to Hideyoshi when you were young, and he liked you better than anyone else. I understand your father's been heard to say you're the Kusunoki Masashige or the K'ung-ming of our times."

"You embarrass me."

"Isn't it true?"

"I want to spend the rest of my days here, quietly, in the shadow of the mountain where the Buddha's Law is preserved. That's all. I'm not a man of refinement. It's enough for me if I can expand my fields a little, live to see my son's child born, have freshly made buckwheat noodles in the fall, eat fresh greens in the spring. Beyond that, I'd like to live a long life, far removed from wars or rumors of war."

"Is that really all there is to it?" Sado asked mildly.