Musashi: Bushido Code (49 page)

Musashi was not afraid to die, but his objective was to win definitively, not just survive, and he was trying to build up the confidence to do so. Let others die heroic deaths, if that suited them. Musashi could settle for nothing less than a heroic victory.

Kyoto was not far away, no more than seventy or eighty miles. If he could keep up a good pace, he could get there in three days. But the time needed to prepare himself spiritually was beyond measuring. Was he inwardly ready? Were his mind and spirit truly one?

Musashi wasn't yet able to reply to these questions in the affirmative. He felt that somewhere deep inside himself there was a weakness, the knowledge of his immaturity. He was painfully aware that he had not attained the state of mind of the true master, that he was still far short of being a complete and perfect human. When he compared himself with Nikkan, or Sekishūsai, or Takuan, he could not avoid the simple truth: he was still green. His own analysis of his abilities and traits unveiled not only weaknesses in some areas but virtual blind spots in others.

But unless he could triumph throughout this life and leave an indelible mark on the world around him, he could not regard himself as a master of the Art of War.

His body shook as he shouted, "I will win, I will!" Limping on toward the upper reaches of the Isuzu, he cried out again for all the trees in the sacred forest to hear: "I will win!" He passed a silent, frozen waterfall and, like a primitive man, crawled over the boulders and pushed his way through thick groves in deep ravines, where few had ever gone before.

His face was as red as a demon's. Clinging to rocks and vines, he could with the utmost effort advance only one step at a time.

Beyond a point called Ichinose there was a gorge five or six hundred yards long, so full of crags and rapids that even the trout could not make their way through it. At the farther end rose an almost sheer precipice. It was said that only monkeys and goblins could climb it. Musashi merely looked at the cliff and said matter-of-factly, "This is it. This is the way to Eagle Mountain."

Elated, he saw no impassable barrier here. Seizing hold of strong vines, he started up the rock face, half climbing, half swinging, seemingly lifted by some upside-down gravity.

Having reached the cliff top, he exploded with a cry of triumph. From here he could make out the white flow of the river and the silver strand along the shore of Futamigaura. Ahead of him, through a sparse grove veiled in nocturnal mist, he saw before his eyes the foot of Eagle Mountain.

The mountain was Sekishūsai. As it had laughed while he'd lain in bed, the peak continued to mock him now. His unyielding spirit felt literally assaulted by Sekishūsai's superiority. It was oppressing him, holding him back.

Gradually his objective took form: to climb to the top and unleash his rancor, to trample roughshod on the head of Sekishūsai, to show him Musashi could and would win.

He advanced against the opposition of weeds, trees, ice—all enemies trying desperately to keep him back. Every step, every breath, was a challenge. His recently chilled blood boiled, and his body steamed as the sweat from his pores met the frosty air. Musashi hugged the red surface of the peak, groping for footholds. Each time he felt for a footing he had to struggle, and small
rocks
would go crashing down to the grove below. One hundred feet, two hundred, three hundred—he was in the clouds. When they parted, he appeared from below to be hanging weightless in the
sky.
The mountain peak stared coldly down at him.

Now, nearing the top, he hung on for dear life. One false move and he would come flying down in a cascade of rocks and boulders. He puffed and grunted, gasping for air with his very pores. So intense was the strain, his heart seemed about to rise up and explode from his mouth. He could climb but a few feet, then rest, climb a few feet more, then rest again.

The whole world lay beneath him: the great forest enclosing the shrine, the white strip that must be the river, Mount Asama, Mount Mae, the fishing village at Toba, the great open sea. "Almost there," he thought. "Just a little more!"

"Just a little more." How easy to say, but how difficult to achieve! For "just a little more" is what distinguishes the victorious sword from the vanquished.

The odor of sweat in his nostrils, he felt giddily that he was nestled in his mother's breast. The rough surface of the mountain began to feel like her skin, and he experienced an urge to go to sleep. But just then a piece of rock under his big toe broke off and brought him to his senses. He groped for another foothold.

"This is it! I'm almost there!" Hands and feet knotted with pain, he clawed again at the mountain. If his body or willpower weakened, he told himself, then as a swordsman he would surely one day be done in. This was where the match would be decided, and Musashi knew it.

"This is for you, Sekishūsai! You bastard!" With every pull and tug, he execrated the giants he respected, those supermen who had brought him here and whom he must and would conquer. "One for you, Nikkan! and you, Takuan!"

He was climbing over the heads of his idols, trampling over them, showing them who was best. He and the mountain were now one, but the mountain, as if astonished to have this creature clawing into it, snarled and spit out regular avalanches of gravel and sand. Musashi's breath stopped as though someone had clapped his hands over his face. As he clung to the rock, the wind gusted, threatening to blow him away, rock and all.

Then suddenly he was lying on his stomach, his eyes closed, not daring to move. But in his heart he sang a song of exultation. At the moment when he had flattened out, he had seen the sky in all directions, and the light of dawn was suddenly visible in the white sea of clouds below.

"I've done it! I've won!"

The instant he realized he had reached the top, his strained willpower snapped like a bowstring. The wind at the summit showered his back with sand and stones. Here at the border of heaven and earth, Musashi felt an indescribable joy swelling out to fill his whole being. His sweat-drenched body united with the surface of the mountain; the spirit of man and the spirit of the mountain were performing the great work of procreation in the vast expanse of nature at dawn. Wrapped in an unearthly ecstasy, he slept the sleep of peace.

When he finally lifted his head, his mind was as pure and clear as crystal. He had the impulse to jump and dart about like a minnow in a stream.

"There's nothing above me!" he cried. "I'm standing on top of the eagle's head!"

The pristine morning sun cast its reddish light on him and on the mountain as he stretched his brawny, savage arms toward the sky. He looked down at his two feet planted firmly on the summit, and as he looked, he saw what seemed like a bucketful of yellowish pus stream from his injured foot. Amid the celestial purity surrounding him, there arose the strange odor of humanity—the sweet smell of gloom dispelled.

The Mayfly in Winter

Every morning after finishing their shrine duties, the maidens living in the House of Virgins went, books in hand, to the schoolroom at the Arakida house, where they studied grammar and practiced writing poems. For their performances of religious dances, they dressed in white silk kimono with crimson widely flared trousers, called
hakama,
but now they had on the short-sleeved kimono and white cotton
hakama
they wore while studying or doing household chores.

A group of them was streaming out the back door when one exclaimed, "What's that?" She was pointing to the pack with the swords tied to it, hung up there by Musashi the night before.

"Whose do you think it is?"

"It must be a samurai's."

"Isn't that obvious?"

"No, it could have been left here by a thief."

They looked wide-eyed at each other and gulped, as though they had come across the robber himself—leather bandannaed and taking his noonday nap.

"Perhaps we should tell Otsū about it," one of them suggested, and by common consent they all ran back to the dormitory and called up from beneath the railing outside Otsū's room.

"Sensei! Sensei!
There's something strange down here. Come and look!"

Otsū put her writing brush down on her desk and stuck her head out the window. "What is it?" she asked.

"A thief left his swords and a bundle behind. They're over there, hanging on the back wall."

"Really? You'd better take them over to the Arakida house."

"Oh, we can't! We're afraid to touch them."

"Aren't you making a big fuss over nothing? Run along to your lessons now, and don't waste any more time."

By the time Otsū came down from her room, the girls had gone. The only people in the dormitory were the old woman who did the cooking and one of the maidens who had taken ill. "Whose things are those hanging up here?" Otsū asked the cook.

The woman did not know, of course.

"I'll take them over to the Arakida house," Otsū said. When she took the pack and swords down, she nearly dropped them, they were so heavy. Lugging them with both hands, she wondered how men could walk about carrying so much weight.

Otsū and Jōtarō had come here two months earlier, after traveling up and down the Iga, Omi and Mino highroads in search of Musashi. Upon their arrival in Ise, they had decided to settle down for the winter, since it would be difficult to make their way through the mountains in the snow. At first Otsū had given flute lessons in the Toba district, but then she had come to the attention of the head of the Arakida family, who, being the official ritualist, ranked second only to the chief priest.

When Arakida asked Otsū to come to the shrine to teach the maidens, she had consented, not so much out of a desire to teach as out of her interest in learning the ancient, sacred music. Then, too, the peacefulness of the shrine's forest had appealed to her, as had the idea of living for a while with the shrine maidens, the youngest of whom was thirteen or fourteen, and the oldest around twenty.

Jōtarō had stood in the way of her taking the position, for it was forbidden to have a male, even of his age, living in the same dormitory as the maidens. The arrangement they arrived at was that Jōtarō could sweep the sacred gardens in the daytime and spend his nights in the Arakidas' woodshed.

As Otsū passed through the shrine gardens, a forbidding unearthly breeze whistled through the leafless trees. One thin column of smoke rose from a distant grove, and Otsū thought of Jōtarō, who was probably there cleaning the grounds with his bamboo broom. She stopped and smiled, pleased that Jōtarō, the incorrigible, was minding very well these days, applying himself dutifully to his chores at just the age when young boys think of nothing but playing and amusing themselves.

The loud cracking noise she heard sounded like a branch breaking off a tree. It came a second time, and clutching her load, she ran down the path through the grove, calling, "Jōtarō! J-ō-ō-t-a-r-ō-ō-ō!"

"Y-e-e-s?" came the lusty reply. In no time she heard his running footsteps. But when he drew up before her, he said merely, "Oh, it's you."

"I thought you were supposed to be working," said Otsū sternly. "What are you doing with that wooden sword? And dressed in your white work clothes too."

"I was practicing. Practicing on the trees."

"Nobody objects to your practicing, but not here, Jōtarō. Have you forgotten where you are? This garden symbolizes peace and purity. It's a holy area, sacred to the goddess who is the ancestress of us all. Look over there. Don't you see the sign saying it's forbidden to damage the trees or hurt or kill the animals? It's a disgrace for a person who works here to be breaking off branches with a wooden sword."

"Aw, I know all that," he grumbled, a look of resentment on his face.

"If you know it, why do you do it? If Master Arakida caught you at it, you'd really be in trouble!"

"I don't see anything wrong with breaking off dead limbs. It's all right if they're dead, isn't it?"

"No, it is not! Not here."

"That's how much you know! Just let me ask you a question."

"What might that be?"

"If this garden is so important, why don't people take better care of it?" "It's a shame they don't. To let it run down this way is like letting weeds grow in one's soul."

"It wouldn't be so bad if it were only weeds, but look at the trees. The ones split by lightning have been allowed to die, and the ones blown over by the typhoons are lying right where they fell. They're all over the place. And the birds have pecked at the roofs of the buildings until they leak. And nobody ever fixes any of the stone lanterns when they get knocked out of shape.

"How can you think this place is important? Listen, Otsū, isn't the castle at Osaka white and dazzling when you see it from the ocean at Settsu? Isn't Tokugawa Ieyasu building more magnificent castles at Fushimi and a dozen other places? Aren't the new houses of the daimyō and the rich merchants in Kyoto and Osaka glittering with gold ornaments? Don't the tea masters Rikyū and Kobori Enshū say that even a speck of dirt out of place in the teahouse garden spoils the flavor of the tea?

"But this garden's going to ruin. Why, the only people working in it are me and three or four old men! And look how big it is!"

"Jōtarō!" said Otsū, putting her hand under his chin and lifting his face. "You're doing nothing but repeating word for word what Master Arakida said in a lecture."

"Oh, did you hear it too?"

"Indeed I did," she said reproachfully.

"Uh, well, can't win all the time."

"Parroting what Master Arakida says will carry no weight with me. I don't approve of it, even when what he says is right."

"He is right, you know. When I hear him talk, I wonder whether Nobunaga and Hideyoshi and Ieyasu are really such great men. I know they're supposed to be important, but is it really so wonderful to take control of the country if you get the idea that you're the only person in it who counts?"

"Well, Nobunaga and Hideyoshi weren't as bad as some of the others. At least they repaired the imperial palace in Kyoto and tried to make the people happy. Even if they did these things only to justify their conduct to themselves and others, they still deserve a lot of credit. The Ashikaga shōguns were much worse."

"How?"

"You've heard about the Ōnin War, haven't you?"

"Um."

"The Ashikaga shogunate was so incompetent, there was constant civil war—warriors fighting other warriors all the time to gain more territory for themselves. The ordinary people didn't get a moment's peace, and nobody had any real concern for the country as a whole."

"You mean those famous battles between the Yamanas and the Hosokawas?"

"Yes.... It was during those days, over a hundred years ago, that Arakida Ujitsune became the chief priest of the Ise Shrine, and there wasn't even enough money to continue the ancient ceremonies and sacred rites. Ujitsune petitioned the government twenty-seven times for help to repair the shrine buildings, but the imperial court was too poor, the shogunate was too weak, and the warriors so busy with their bloodbaths they didn't care what happened. In spite of all this, Ujitsune went around pleading his case till he finally succeeded in setting up a new shrine.

"It's a sad story, isn't it? But when you think about it, people when they grow up forget they owe their lifeblood to their ancestors, just as we all owe our lives to the goddess at Ise."

Pleased with himself for having elicited this long, passionate speech from Otsū, Jōtarō jumped in the air, laughing and clapping his hands. "Now who's parroting Master Arakida? You thought I hadn't heard that before, didn't you?"

"Oh, you're impossible!" exclaimed Otsū, laughing herself. She would have cuffed him one, but her bundle was in the way. Still smiling, she glared at the boy, who finally took notice of her unusual parcel.

"Whose are those?" he asked, stretching out his hand.

"Don't touch them! We don't know whose they are."

"Oh, I'm not going to break anything. I just want to look. I bet they're heavy. That long sword's really big, isn't it?" Jōtarō's mouth was watering.

"Sensei!"
With a patter of straw sandals, one of the shrine maidens ran up. "Master Arakida is calling for you. I think there's something he wants you to do." Scarcely pausing, she turned and ran back.

Jōtarō looked around in all four directions, a startled expression on his face. The wintry sun was shining through the trees, and the twigs swayed like wavelets. His eyes looked as though they had spotted a phantom among the patches of sunlight.

"What's the matter?" asked Otsū. "What are you looking at?"

"Oh, nothing," replied the boy dejectedly, biting his forefinger. "When that girl called 'teacher,' I thought for a second she meant my teacher."

Otsū, too, suddenly felt sad and a little annoyed. Though Jōtarō's remark had been made in all innocence, why did he have to mention Musashi?

Despite Takuan's advice, she could not conceive of trying to expel from her heart the longing she cherished for Musashi. Takuan was so unfeeling; in a way she pitied him and his apparent ignorance of the meaning of love.

Love was like a toothache. When Otsū was busy, it did not bother her, but when the remembrance struck her, she was seized by the urge to go out on the highways again, to search for him, to find him, to place her head on his chest and shed tears of happiness.

Silently, she started walking. Where was he? Of all the sorrows that beset living beings, surely the most gnawing, the most wretched, the most agonizing, was not to be able to lay eyes on the person one pined for. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she walked on.

The heavy swords with their worn fittings meant nothing to her. How could she have dreamed she was carrying Musashi's own belongings?

Jōtarō, sensing he had done something wrong, followed sadly a short distance behind. Then, as Otsū turned into the gate at the Arakida house, he ran up to her and asked, "Are you angry? About what I said?"

"Oh, no, it's nothing."

"I'm sorry, Otsū. I really am."

"It's not your fault. I just feel kind of sad. But don't worry about it. I'm going to find out what Master Arakida wants. You go back to your work."

Arakida Ujitomi called his home the House of Study. He had converted part of it into a school, attended not only by the shrine maidens but also by forty or fifty other children from the three counties belonging to Ise Shrine. He was trying to impart to the young a type of learning not currently very popular: the study of ancient Japanese history, which in the more sophisticated towns and cities was considered irrelevant. The early history of the country was intimately connected with Ise Shrine and its lands, but this was an age when people tended to confuse the fate of the nation with that of the warrior class, and what had happened in the distant past counted for little. Ujitomi was fighting a lonely battle to plant the seeds of an earlier, more traditional culture among the young people from the shrine area. While others might claim provincial regions had nothing to do with the national destiny, Ujitomi took a different view. If he could teach the local children about the past, perhaps, he thought, its spirit would one day thrive like a great tree in the sacred forest.

With perseverance and devotion, he talked to the children each day about the Chinese classics and the
Record of Ancient Matters,
the earliest history of Japan, hoping that his charges would eventually come to value these books. He had been doing this for more than ten years. To his way of thinking, Hideyoshi might seize control of the country and proclaim himself regent, Tokugawa Ieyasu might become the omnipotent "barbarian-subduing" shōgun, but young children should not, like their elders, mistake the lucky star of some military hero for the beautiful sun. If he labored patiently, the young would come to understand that it was the great Sun Goddess, not an uncouth warrior-dictator, who symbolized the nation's aspirations.

Arakida emerged from his spacious classroom, his face a little sweaty. As the children flew out like a swarm of bees and darted quickly off to their homes, a shrine maiden told him Otsū was waiting. Somewhat flustered, he said, "That's right. I sent for her, didn't I? I completely forgot. Where is she?"

Otsū was just outside the house, where she had been standing for some time listening to Arakida's lecture. "Here I am," she called. "Did you want me?"

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. Come inside."

He led her to his private study, but before sitting down, pointed to the objects she was carrying and asked what they were. She explained how she came to have them; he squinted and stared suspiciously at the swords. "Ordinary worshipers wouldn't come here with things like that," he said. "And they weren't there last evening. Somebody must have come inside the walls in the middle of the night."