The Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi of Southern Fusa

Volume III, Book III

Assembled by the Master of the Crooked Pavilion in the Eastern Capital

Chapter XXV

Hamaji, being filled with passion, testifies of her wretchedness;

Gakuzō, having denounced wickedness, returns to his master’s house

We resume our story. Hikiroku allowed Shino to nurse him for a time as if he had nearly drowned. Then he opened his eyes, raised a hand, and moved his legs, as if finally coming to his senses. He let Shino help him sit up, then he felt his own pulse. “I have come back to life, then. What peril I was in,” he said, pulling himself to his feet by clinging to a nearby post. Shino rejoiced at his speedy recovery, and together they left the hut on the river shore.

When they did so, they found that Dotarō had brought the boat back, with Samojirō aboard. Shino hurried to don his clothes and gird on his swords while Samojirō took Hikiroku’s hand and helped him into the boat, congratulating him on surviving unscathed. One asked the other about the action in the water, the other announced his sufferings, and both grew excited unto loud laughter while the boat left the shore. Chastened by the accident, Hikiroku refused to cast his net again, and at length they put in at the shore whence they had departed.

The catch of small fry was transferred to the creel, and what did not fit was strung up with stalks of bamboo grass hung from the middle of a pole of green bamboo that Shino and Samojirō carried slung between them. Hikiroku let them walk ahead—then he fumbled in his purse and handed Dotarō a certain amount of money, twisted in paper, evidently compensation for his evening’s labors. This Dotarō had pretended to be one who made his living aboard riverboats, but in fact he was a villain of no fixed abode whom Hikiroku had recruited into trying to eliminate Shino. Now whispered comments passed between these two, as all the while they stole frequent glances at Shino and the other, who were now a hundred yards or more ahead of them.

The two who had gone ahead now turned to look back at the distance that lay behind them, realizing that they had failed to keep formation. They waited until at last Hikiroku came running up, and then they hurried with him down the road to his house. The moon was out, seventeen nights old, the wind was restless in the greening fields, the road at night was particularly cool, and as they walked along in conversation, Hikiroku spoke to Shino and the rest, saying, “Tonight’s accident was the result of a carelessness I shall not repeat as long as I live. If, say, Kamezasa should learn of this, she will never cease speaking of it, and she will forbid me from ever going fishing again. By all means, this must be kept concealed—it must be kept concealed.” He pursed his lips in the sincerest of manners.

They were already approaching Metal-Monkey Barrow¹ when they met someone coming toward them, with a bundle of cargo wrapped in a cloth on his back. By the lantern he carried there could be no mistaking him: it was Sesuke. When Hikiroku saw this, he called out to him, asking, “Why are you so late?”

Sesuke bowed at the waist. “The food basket was not ready—I spent more time than I thought in getting it.”

Hardly had he finished, though, when Hikiroku burst out in feigned rage, “Dullards and blackguards! I told the scullery maid when I left, the sieve-eared wench! Well, what good does it do to bring it now?”

By the time they had all returned to the village, it was nearly midnight. Samojirō escorted Hikiroku to his gate, but as the night was late he did not go inside; he bid Shino an earnest farewell, congratulating him on his departure on the morrow, and then went home to his own lodgings.

Hikiroku roused a couple of servants and gave them the small fry he had caught, that they might prepare them for eating. By the time the fish were ready—some boiled, some fried—the sake Kamezasa had been warming had reached the proper temperature, so the couple sent the servants back to bed and summoned Shino to their chamber; as they had decided to send Gakuzō with him to Koga as a follower, they called for him as well—he had gone to bed early—that he might tend the ladle as at an entertainment.

Soon all four were seated in a circle, passing around the parting cup. When the revelry had peaked, Hikiroku signaled Kamezasa to take out a hundred me in silver, which he handed Shino for his travel expenses with a stalwart goodwill that resembled nothing he had shown Shino these many years. They then fell to discussing the route he would take on his journey to Koga, and with all the swiftness of a summer’s night they soon found that the third quarter of the hour of the ox had passed.²

“If you do not slumber for at least a little while, you will be unable to bear your journey tomorrow. Hurry, now, and go to sleep.” Kamezasa’s words marked the turning of the tide: Shino and Gakuzō took their leaves and retired each to his own bedroom. By this time the servants were all dead to the world, every one of them in a sound sleep—even Hamaji had been abed in her little parlor since the first hours of the evening, having pled indisposition.

Now did Hikiroku whisper to Kamezasa of events at the Kaniwa River, and the success of his plan to lure Shino into the water. Kamezasa lent him her ears, a smile on her face, for an hour or more, answering nothing but only nodding: her shadow ’gainst the lantern’s spheroid glow was like the hare cavorting in the moon. Having finished his whispered tale, Hikiroku licked his parched lips and said, “When I got back in the boat, Samojirō met my eyes with a glance that spoke volumes: he most definitely switched out that precious blade, of that I make no doubt. Tomorrow is too distant—I shall waste away in waiting; let me have a look now.”

Indeed, he pulled the light closer, then proceeded to loosen the sword from the lip of its scabbard, and then to free it entirely. His night vision was insufficient for him to judge the blade by its appearance with surety, but it looked to be a keen one, and when a few drops of water spilled from the scabbard to land like dewdrops on the floor mats, Hikiroku gazed at them with apprehension, touching them, sniffing them, before exclaiming, “A prodigy, this sword! When it is drawn it emits mist, and when it is wielded with intent to kill it causes rain to fall—this is that sword indeed. I had long heard that its name, Rainmaker, came from its marvelous properties, and now I see them! Oh, noble sword! Oh, happy day! A prodigy—a prodigy.”

Seeing her husband several times wet his fingers in the droplets and smear the water on his forehead, Kamezasa followed suit: “Must not waste it!” she said. But the drops of water that she wiped up with her fingertips came from the Kaniwa River. Samojirō himself was not lacking in cunning, and when he had made the triple switch that exchanged his blade for the treasure, he had anticipated that Hikiroku must surely unsheathe the sword afterward, and he had poured a small amount of river water into Hikiroku’s scabbard before slipping his own blade into it, knowing that Rainmaker emitted mist from its tip.

Hikiroku, ignorant of what had happened, rejoiced unto Heaven and earth. He put away the blade and lifted the sword reverently, intoning, “For thirty years my thoughts have been set on Rainmaker, and now this treasure, this sword, has come into my hands. All my hopes have been fulfilled.”

Kamezasa, too, was moved to deep reflection. “What we have so long desired has come to pass just as we desired it. Here, have some sake, just this once, to commemorate our joy!”

Hikiroku took her up on her offer and raised his cup. “Knowing the importance of this night, I refrained from drinking enough to intoxicate me. Pray, my lady, have you unfolded to Gakuzō his secret purpose?”

Kamezasa stuck her chin out as she replied, “There has been no negligence on that score, I dare say. This evening in Shino’s absence I summoned him in secret and explained thus-and-such to him, instructed him to act in such-and-such a way, and he accepted it all in good faith, raising no objections at all. He undertook my charge and left. He may be no match for Shino, but as they say, there is no defense against deception. ’Twill for the most part be accomplished, for luck runs our way. Yea, even should Shino not be taken in by Gakuzō’s ruse, but strike back at him, we have already confiscated his precious sword—it will mean no loss to us. Think you not so?”

Hikiroku listened to her hissed report, then said, “Indeed, ’tis so. The sword is taken, and Shino sent away: any thought of going further than that is but to abort any future crises—simply leaving it undone brings us no harm. Even if Gakuzō is killed and Shino survives unscathed—even if he suspects us, and brings charges against us—everybody knows that Shino and Gakuzō have never gotten along. I shall simply say that Gakuzō must have been moved by some private resentment to try to harm Shino, and that I knew nothing about it. In short, I have an excuse ready. But this is only a plan of escape on the slim chance one is needed—we are in the way of thinking too much. We must simply wait, and not long at that, for Gakuzō’s report, be it good or ill. How delicious!”

He wagged his tongue in joy so much he stuck it out—he pressed a hand to his mouth even as he pressed more liquor down his throat—drunkenness stole over him like a thief that never shows his face, and lives on the gettings of others. “You must drink, too,” he said, and held out the cup to her. The pair were unaware that all their plans and purposes had crossed like pincers of two grasping crabs. They greedily devoured the broiled fish, then brimful filled their cups, each for the other pouring, and inhaled the parting draft—fists clenched, they both exhaled. Ignoring, then, the scattered plates and cups, they went to bed; as soon as they were in their bedchamber their snoring echoed loud throughout the house.

At that time, Shino had gone into his bedroom, but had been unable to sleep for awaiting the dawn. Alone the future he would contemplate, when he must leave—and who would bid him stay?—and, as he quit the village, leave behind his parents’ tumuli—sorry was he! The sandy, trackless road his heart must take was shared by Hamaji, who now did quit her bedroom, that she might express the grief and hurt she felt, as unexpiring as the snores that sounded from her parents’ room and urged her on, while yet they slept, and yet prevented her from going where she would to meet the one she would, from whom she shrank as if his door were guarded gate. She soft and gingerly his lintel trod, no sound to make, but her shaky knees fought her, unstable as the floating world—she thought it lusterless and miserable and hard, she hated it, and him to whose pillow now she crept.

Shino saw someone was there and, pulling to him his sword, abruptly stood: he cried, “Who goes there?” but she silent kept. “Now come, I make no doubt you are a villain. Have you come to monitor my breathing, that you might stab me in my sleep and kill me?”

Suspicion kept him cautious: now he turned the lantern’s mouth toward the unknown one and peered into the dark: ’twas Hamaji. She could not rush unbidden in, and so she sank to the floor behind the net that kept mosquitos out: she never wept aloud, but sobbed in silence, lest her tears show forth their pattern, like that left on cloth by hare’s-foot fern frond memories’ imprint indelible and inextricable their tangles hers³; she murmured in her pain. In Shino’s breast, indomitable before the strongest foe, anxiety now raged: he calmed himself and stepped outside the net, undoing its strings and setting it aside with the bedding.

“Hamaji, what necessity keeps you awake so late, and leads you astray here? Know you not the proverb, never put on your shoes in a melon patch, never straighten your hat under a plum tree?”⁴

At this reproach she grudgingly wiped away her tears and lifted her head. “Why have I come? How like a stranger you speak. If we were lovers only in the name, like two threads only loosely interwov’n, or tied together in a slipp’ry knot, then I could understand the bitterness of having you address me thus—I should not wonder at it so. But you and I are man and wife, given to each other by our very parents—have they not said as much? But never mind what we do day to day: it would no shame at all attach to you to tell me that we must part after tonight, and yet you would feign ignorance to me until the moment you leave, and not vouchsafe me e’en a single word, a scrap of speech—unfeeling! Hard-hearted!”

These angry words elicited sighs unbidd’n from Shino. “A man’s not made of wood or stone: I know of passions, feelings, yours and mine, but placed as I am in the midst of malignant ill will, I dared not open my mouth to tell you. I know that you are true—have always known. And surely you must know what’s in my breast. ’Tis less than forty miles to Koga—I can be there and back in three or four days. Await, I pray, the day of my return.”

She heard these soothing words and wiped her eyes. “So you say, but you lie. Once you have left here, how can you ever return? The caged bird yearns for his home in the clouds because he misses his friends; the sturdy warrior leaves his home in the country because he yearns for a stipend. Yea, and those two, unstable as they are in love and hate, have a pall over their thoughts regarding you—I daresay that it shrouds this journey, too—they send you off not desiring your return—and he who leaves thinks it better he not stay. And so I ask, once you have left here, when will be the day of your return? Tonight we part forever.

“I have four parents: of this you no doubt know. However, those who are currently my parents have never spoken of this. It was repeated to me, vaguely, that my real father was a retainer of the house of Nerima, and that I have a sibling—but I am not certain of the name. This does not mean I disregard the debt of gratitude I owe to those who raised me—but I owe much as well to those who birthed me. I would learn of my true parents—I would know how I might learn of them—but I am a girl, and helpless. ’Tis nothing I can tell another, and so I pondered it alone—how many sleepless nights have I endured, how many dawns have found me wishing that ’twere all a dream, and can there be a god to whom I have not prayed that it were so?

“For months, for years, I suffered in my mind, until, in the fourth month of last year, unlooked for came the news of the destruction of the houses of Toshima and Nerima, all their housemen, servants, and senior vassals alike, cut down—uncommon in its force this rumor came, and if ’twere true, then how could kith and kin have possibly escaped? This thought grieved me: I impotently wailed, but hid my sleeves, which never dried from passing bursts of rain, from my parents’ eyes, along with all my pain. These things to you I thought I might reveal, and mayhap you would know my parents’ names, that I might pray for them now they are dead. You were my only hope, and what should I keep hidden from the one to whom I cleave and ever shall, as long as life may last, my husband? But my way to you was blocked as if by tight-shut gate, and thicketed with watchful gazes: while I wished in vain for cock to crow deceitfully, a chance that hardly earned the name appeared—I went, approached you, but my mother, too, soon followed, and I, flustered, retreated.

“This was in the seventh month of last year, and ever since, my heart has been a river dammed, cut off from you, but ever in its current true, like water flowing down against the weir. Never passes e’en a single day without me praying every morn and eve that you might safely go into the world and find your fortune and your glory there—but e’en the strongest heart has limits. Is it duty to your aunt that leads you to abandon your wife? If your sincerity to me were but the hundredth part of what I feel for you, then might you say to me, ‘For thus-and-such a reason, I cannot know the day of my return: then come away with me in secret’; and since we are man and wife, who would curse you for a secret paramour? Ah, the faithfulness of woman’s heart, so loath to part that it would call you heartless, would not let go your sleeve until shaken off, would fain die on your blade rather than expire from yearning, and in the darkling land await your coming, e’en a century hence!” As thus she wooed, her myriad complaints, heartrending all, took the form of tears innumerable that, though daring make no sound, sufficed to saturate her sleeves.

Shino sadly sighed, as if to say that her voice might overspill the room and be o’erheard, a thing that promised pain, but he had no words to explicate their fate, as hard to hold as water from the rocks scooped up in hands. And so he unfolded his arms, placed his palms on his knees, and said:

“There, there, Hamaji. I do not call a single one of your complaints unreasonable, but what shall I do? I leave because my aunt and her husband instructed me to. In truth, they would distance me, so that they might bring in a groom for you. From the beginning I have been your man, and yet not your man: you may, I think, guess what your parents think in the bottoms of their hearts, as hard as it may be to speak it. If in the face of that I now allow myself to be lured on by passion, to the point of tempting you out with me, who will not call it wanton? If you stay, though it be hard for you to do so, it is for my sake: if I go, though it be hard for me to leave, is it not for yours? Though we are parted for a while, yet if our hearts endure unchanged toward one another, there will be a time when we are united. Go quickly back to your bedroom, I pray you, before your parents awake. With my mind, too, set to the task, surely some means will present itself by which we may yet inquire after your parents, and comprehend whether they live or die. Leave at once, I pray you.”

In spite of this admonition, she did not stand up, but merely shook her head. “One only shuns the dew when one is dry. Should my parents awake and reproach me for having come here, I, too, shall have a thing or two to say. Only, unless I hear you answer that you will take me with you, I never shall that threshold cross alive. Then kill me, please!” She thus confronted him, a girl, so weak in spirit, but she would not be moved, and there she sat, while Shino grew more and more bothered and agitated.

His voice grew rougher, even as he lowered it. “You do not listen—do not understand! While there is yet life there is yet time. Is death the only way to prove one’s faith? My aunt and my aunt’s husband, by some chance, have given me permission to leave, to make my way in the world, and if you would prevent me you are no wife to me. Perhaps you are an enemy from a past life?”

At this rebuke, Hamaji sank down, sobbing. “I only sought to gain my heart’s desire—and now that you have shown me to be but your enemy, I have no recourse left. I am, in all and all, alone, and life is lusterless and joyless unto me: I shall leave off yearning, and stay behind. I hope your journey brings no harm to you, that the fierce rays of the sun do not defeat you, and that you go to Koga, there raise up your name, revive your house, and then, come wintertime, in shelter from the northern alpine gales, you send me word of you upon the wind. I shall content myself with knowing, then, that the lord of my heart does safely dwell somewhere ’tween me and distant Mount Tsukuba. And if my life’s gemm’d thread grows weaker still and breaks, this will be our last farewell in this life: my hopes are for that unseen, darkling land. Our vows are sure! They will last two lifetimes. Only let not your heart be changed toward me!”

Such grave and hopeless things she said, and set her hopes in vows, tied them to prayers as one who with cotton cords ties back one’s sleeves to pray: how quick and clever she looked, and yet how silly a girl she was, how pitiable her virgin heart. Lo, even Shino wilted—he could not comfort her, nor think of anything to say, but simply nodded at her words.

Just then came the cock’s eightfold cry, and Shino’s thoughts hastened toward “her parents in the inner room—they will be waking—quickly, quickly.”

Hamaji finally arose, saying, “ ‘At break of dawn / would that the fox might / devour chanticleer / for crowing too early / and chasing him away.’⁵ That speaks of lovers’ grassy pillow shared; ours is a separation of lovers, that one might journey forth. Dawn may not break unless the cock doth crow; men may not wake unless the dawn doth break. I hate the rooster’s voice. Never comes the night when I may meet thee on Trysting Hill, only a gate there barred to me, and the moon shining vainly in the dawn.”⁶

Still murmuring and humming to herself, she went to leave. But then there came a cough from the hallway, and a rapping at the sliding door. “The rooster has crowed, sir—are you yet sleeping?” It was Gakuzō, come to rouse Shino. Shino quickly answered him, and Gakuzō retreated in the direction of the kitchen. “Hurry, before someone else comes,” said Shino, as he expelled Hamaji.

She turned and gazed at Shino in the dark ’neath eyelids swoll’n with crying and hazy with tears like the tiny mountains that crowded the papered wall ’gainst which she leaned, and then she turned and went away, weeping, back to her bedchamber. No parting in death is sadder than a parting for life. Oh, a rare maiden—they had never been duck and drake beneath the sheets, had never adjoined their pillows like two-trunked tree, and yet no century-old marriage held a greater passion than hers.

But Shino, too, was driven by a passion, one that would not let his heart be moved by hers—they each followed their passion, and by this more fully appeared in their different aspects, he as man, she as woman. In this maelstrom that is the realm of the senses, there is no distinction between wise and unworthy. Of all the many youths throughout the wide world, few are those who, having once gazed on this shore, yet reach it before drowning. Behold, then, this righteous man, this chaste woman! Hamaji’s love was not that which relishes lasciviousness; Shino’s laments were not those to destroy him in grief. Hamaji’s passion, though, may be had again: the likes of Shino are very rarely seen.

But enough of digressions. Gakuzō had arisen at the crack of dawn this morning, kindled a fire, fetched water, and cooked breakfast; he served Shino his and then ate his own. Before most of the servants had stirred, he and Shino were dressed for their journey. Thus it was that Shino and Gakuzō had set everything in order—as was their wont—and were waiting for their master and mistress to arise. A bell rang, announcing six o’clock, but still the couple had not emerged from their bedroom where they were, perhaps, still feeling the effects of the previous night’s drinking. Shino was eager to seize the cool of the morning, but felt he could hardly leave without at least a word to them, and so he went to their room and called to them in a loud voice: “Are you awake yet? I am departing now, and have come to beg your leave. ’Tis Shino. Do you wake?”

His sleep disturbed, Hikiroku answered him as if in a dream: “Go, then, begone.”

Shino once again lifted his voice: “Aunt, are you not yet astir? Shino has come to take his leave.”

To this Kamezasa said, in a groggy voice, “Go, then, begone.”

Shino listened to these responses and withdrew. As he went outside, Hamaji, understandably reluctant to let people see she had been crying, could not come out, but merely slid her door aside a sliver, so that she might see him go—she was bereft of speech—tears stung her eyes as she beheld the one now dressed in robes of parting from his wife.

Now as Shino and Gakuzō took their first steps, the servants rushed to see them off, coming with Sesuke to the gate, where they all spoke unrestrainedly of their sadness while blessing his journey; this commotion lasted a little while.

Meanwhile, Hikiroku and Kamezasa, who had only gone to sleep late the previous night after having become thoroughly drunk, slept on. They finally got out of bed after the sun had risen high in the sky. “What of Shino?” they asked.

The servants reported that “he departed in thus-and-such a manner with the bell that tolled the sixth hour of the morning.”

Hikiroku and his wife were dumbfounded at this: they exchanged glances, as if to say, “We missed him.” But it was with no apparent shame that they began to cluck in exasperation. “No doubt he did—but why did you not inform us? And how disrespectful of Shino! Temporary as his departure may be, is it proper for him to go without taking his leave of us?”

Thus they railed with voices raised, but one of the servants said, “Nay, he went to your bedroom and said so on and so forth, but your honors answered, ‘Go, then, begone.’ Perhaps you were talking in your sleep?”

The rest of the servants could no longer contain their laughter—it burst out, which only increased the couple’s annoyance. “What is it you find so amusing? You must learn how to handle Shino. Now give that area a sweep or three, place salt at the gate, and scatter flowers—busy yourselves!” As Hikiroku bawled these words in his gnawing Eastern accent, his hearers scattered like the sparrows from a thunderstorm that strikes in green-leaf spring, or from the farmer’s clappers in autumn fields.

Hamaji, alone among the household, did not emerge from her room all day. She was ill, so distressed that she thought she must perish, and could not even pick up her chopsticks to eat. Her parents quietly conferred, saying, “We cannot let her die—she must be our support in our old age—it would be like the hanging bridge to wealth and advancement had snapped. Bring needles, medicines, and food!” Thus flustered, they would serve their daughter well—with energy that was not love they prayed false prayers, doomed to falter once they had secured their own advantage—ah, the lust, the greed, the horror of these parents’ hearts!

It was early on the morning of the eighteenth day of the sixth month of the tenth year of Bunmei,⁷ when the time finally arrived for Inuzuka Shino to realize his long-cherished ambition by striking out, Gakuzō in tow, for the Koga Palace in Shimōsa. Shino was nineteen this year and Gakuzō twenty. Now, these two heroes had already united themselves in a league, bound themselves by oaths and ties of righteousness each to save the other in any distress, take equal shares in every suffering: their hearts were a community of trust, and yet their bodies still remained in the house of a corrupt official. Before any man’s gaze, therefore, they had heretofore remained aloof from one another, Gakuzō cursing Shino, and Shino treating Gakuzō like something less than dirt. Thus neither Hikiroku with all his great cunning, nor Kamezasa with her skittish mistrust, had suspected Gakuzō, but rather had admitted him to their secret counsels. He had been sent to accompany Shino on his journey to Koga as part of one of their schemes.

Thus, with Gakuzō’s assistance, Shino had managed to elude harm, passing several years without untoward incident. Such a thing may appear easy to do, but in fact it was exceedingly hard. Even as an extemporate measure, to feign something one does not feel is difficult: the truth will show through one’s countenance, seep into one’s speech—it will out. To spend some eight or nine years in the midst of such hostility and never let others glean his thoughts was a feat requiring both intelligence and skill: how could Shino have seen this day had the bright gods not reckoned his fidelity and righteousness and vouchsafed him heavenly aid?

Gakuzō had spent the years borrowing tomes from Shino’s library, classics of philosophy, histories and biographies, treatises on strategy, and the like, sometimes concealing them in his bosom, sometimes hiding them in the bottom of his basket, and whenever he went into the wild meadows, the hills and woods, and no one else was around, he would read them and learn them by heart. Nor did he concentrate solely on matters literary. When he went to cut wood he would try out sword moves with his ax—when he went a-reaping he would try out glaive skills with his scythe—he taught himself shooting with the scarecrow’s bow, and naturally acquired horsemanship through riding unbroken palfreys at pasture; yet no one knew of this. There was, however, no way to hide the strength of his thews; but this was all Hikiroku, Kamezasa, and the others noticed. Accordingly, they had confided in him their plan to have Shino stabbed while on the road, thinking that only Gakuzō could do it. Not yet, though, had Gakuzō found an opportunity to whisper to Shino that his master had charged him with such a mission.

Once these two heroes were certain that, one walking ahead and the other trailing after, they had well and truly left the village, Gakuzō spoke. “My mother’s sepulture is on a paddy-path nearby. Though ours will not be a journey of many days, I feel I should visit it and report to her my leaving. Will you not stop with me?”

Shino responded to this invitation thus: “Quite right. I paid a visit to my family’s cloister yesterday and bade farewell to my parents’ tombs, but much has happened since, and your mother’s grave slipped through the cracks. Given the pact of righteousness that we have sealed between us, your mother is mine, as well. How could we not visit her? Let us, then.”

With that the two set off together, and once they had followed the paddy-path to the right some four hundred yards, they arrived—just as dawn’s daws streaked across the sky—at a lone hackberry tree, around the trunk of which a sacred rope had been passed. This was where Gakuzō’s mother lay.

When she had perished here, a traveler, Hikiroku had taken no pity on her, but caused her to be buried here on this paddy-path, discarded, and without a tombstone. After about the age of ten, then, Gakuzō came to secretly bemoan this, and, having no means to erect for her a grave marker, had finally hatched a plan: one night in secret he shimmied up this hackberry and hung from its branches a single strand of sacred rope that he had prepared according to the proper form. The following day, the one who tilled those paddies saw it and was both astonished and alarmed; he told it here and he told it there, and all who heard the tale exclaimed. “The tree must have a spirit, and that is the cause of it all, or else the dead one in that bun of earth beneath the tree may be begging for a prayer hall. If we ignore such a marvel we shall surely be cursed.”

With imprecations, the peasants in the vicinity, to say nothing of the master of the paddies, each produced a modicum of coin, which they used to erect a tiny shrine on the summit of that bun of earth. Every year in the spring and the autumn they renewed the sacred rope, and never cut down the hackberry. Word of it spread hither and yon, and many people came to visit it; and while nobody pronounced it to be so, yet it was bruited about, with every appearance of truth, that “the goddess there will heal all the illnesses women suffer.” Indeed, prayer there was efficacious: therefore this tomb came to be called the Barrow of the Lady Traveler. Even the cruel and merciless Hikiroku, seeing how all the people yearned after her as with a great thirst, was lost in dread lest their devotion be rewarded—he began to fear a curse; he gave a bale of rice to each of the peasants who had originally contributed coin to build the shrine.

Truly Gakuzō’s plan had gone not at all awry. Not only had he prevented his mother’s grave spot from being forgotten, but now she was enshrined amid the paddies. He was deeply moved to imagine her dead soul’s joy. All of this proceeded from the wisdom of a boy only three feet tall, evidence of what a sense of filial piety may naturally accomplish. Now, this strange prodigy, worthy to be spoken of in the same breath as Shino’s Octuplet Plum, took place the year before that event: we speak of it here, for the first time, because much of the story that follows will concern Gakuzō.

But enough of digressions into past things. Shino had heard of the Lady Traveler’s Barrow, but now, contemplating anew the mother’s misfortune and the son’s sense of filial duty, he thought, “I cannot equal him.” Gakuzō taking the lead, they both kowtowed; tears of remembrance irrepressibly mingled with their orisons.

And yet they could not stay like this: they rose, determined to leave off thinking of the past; like fledgling birds that leave their nest behind they left and went their way, Sugamo on their left as they looked back; their track the trackless clear Shakujii River followed, down its stream to Nishigahara; they passed Tabata like the summer rains that followed them passed the fields; in Minowa they sheltered from the rain; they waited for a boat at Ishihama, and then they lightly crossed the Sumida, the cool beneath the boughs embracing them; and shortly they were in Yanagishima, which people said was part of Shimōsa, although the way to Koga was yet long. They hurried toward their lodgings for the night.⁸

In this way Shino and Gakuzō raced along the road for some thirty-three or thirty-four miles, taking lodgings at the post station of Kurihashi, from which place it was less than ten miles to the village of Koga. They had exchanged no unnecessary words along the road, in accordance with their long-held fears that “the Estatesman might well send someone to follow us.” However, having come this far without seeing anything suspicious, and happily finding no other travelers sharing the inn with them, they both relaxed and forgot the fatigue of their journey in the quiet, easy conversation they had been so long denied.

Then Shino told Gakuzō of what had occurred on the Kaniwa River. He left out nothing concerning Hikiroku’s behavior, Dotarō, and the rest. Gakuzō listened, then inclined his head and exclaimed, “Likely he planned to kill you under cover of his plunge into the water. You were in danger.”

Shino reflected upon this for a time before saying, “If he had such a mind to kill me, then what could have led him to send me to Koga, and thereby give up the precious sword upon which he has been fixated all these years? Is it simply in order to marry Hamaji to Kyūroku? Did he only bid me go to Koga as a means of gaining my trust, that he might then kill me at the Kaniwa River? Truly, then, that plan’s failure meant I escaped the tiger’s den.”

Gakuzō shook his head. “Nay, that is by no means all of it. Both the fishing on the Kaniwa and his encouraging you to journey to Koga are that he might kill you, milord: steal your sword, keep your fields in his possession, and make Hikami his son-in-law. How do I know this, you ask? Yesterevening when we were home alone, Her Ladyship your aunt invited me in stealth to a quiet room and spoke to me, saying:

“ ‘Gakuzō, the reason we are sending you as Shino’s companion is because we have decided to entrust you with an important task. ’Tis hard for me to say, but say it I shall: Shino may be my nephew, but consider—he is also an enemy, as if from a past life. He resents his father’s untimely death, and intends revenge upon my husband—long has he been honing the blade of his heart, that he might find my husband asleep one lucky night and take his head. I alone know of it; and yet I could not be sure. I simply thought that to wash away blood with blood must be a shame upon our house, and so I became a shield, and thus we have remained in safety unto today. Now he goes to Koga, and if his affair goes not well for him he will return, and when he does, his hate for my husband, his destructive intent, will grow daily. ’Tis not that I do not pity my nephew—but I could not replace my lord husband. And so I must rely on you. Watch for an unguarded moment on the road, and then kill Shino with one stab of a sword. Bury his corpse quickly, sneak away with his two blades, and bring them back here in secret and show them to me. He will have some money for travel expenses—’twill be yours to gain. Carry out these secret tasks, carry them out well, and I shall commend you to your venerable master—I shall speak a word to him that he ought to make you our son-in-law. Accept this charge, then, and not lightly. You have served us as a menial since you were very young. I have great pity for you, I do. What evil karma was it that made me someone else’s aunt? I kill my nephew for my lord husband’s sake. What you do is for your master: remember loyalty and righteousness. I initially spoke of sending Sesuke with Shino because you and he do not get along, and I did not want to raise his suspicions—but there is no one besides you to whom I would entrust this important task. Perform it well, I implore you.’

“She woo’d me with tears: with honeyed words she spoke to me of gain, manipulated me. I thought it wretched, but would not show it in my countenance: I said, ‘I undertake to do this task. I have long nursed a grudge against Lord Inuzuka: now is the time to vent years of bitterness. I shall not hesitate to risk my life in this, if there is no lie in your promise to give me Her Ladyship your daughter when this is done—a splendid pronouncement indeed.’

“With such evident sincerity did I accept that Her Ladyship your aunt was overjoyed. She said, ‘In that case, I have misgivings about the blade you always wear at your side. Here, then, is a dagger that my eminent father Shōsaku gave to me for self-protection. Paulownia Cutter, it is named, a keen blade that no doubt has the virtue of its name.⁹ It is to be lent to you. I have never told Shino about it, so he will not recognize it and suspect you. Now take it and leave, before someone comes.’ So saying, she hurriedly undid the cord fastening the sword’s pouch and presented me with this dagger.

“That is the master’s plan and his wife’s. They did not let you go, my lord: they mean only to be rid of you. Paulownia Cutter, here, is a memento of your grandfather, milord, Master Shōsaku. Behold it.”

He held out the blade to Shino, who took it in both hands and gazed at it, before placing it next to Gakuzō and sighing. “I hear that my grandfather was a loyal warrior and a righteous. How can his daughter, my aunt, be so filthy within? People say that when a person’s parents are gone, there is no one on whom he can rely so much as his uncles and aunts. For me it is the opposite. I knew I was situated in the house of a foe, but oh, that they should plot against me so obsessively! That I have reached this day safely in spite of it all is entirely a gift from you.

“My father, in his dying moments, gave me instruction, saying, ‘Should my sister and her husband finally improve their aspirations and have true mercy upon you, then you must serve them in all sincerity of heart, and repay them with dutifulness for what they have done in raising you. If, however, they never leave off nurturing harm for you in their hearts, and the day comes when you are no longer able to protect the sword, then you must leave quickly, holding fast to the treasure. Though they care for you for five years, or seven, it is you who are in the direct line of the Ōtsuka clan succession: the emoluments of office that Hikiroku enjoys are a gift, as it were, from your grandsire. Your aunt and her husband incur no debt of gratitude from you simply by raising you with that stipend, and so you cannot be called unrighteous if you leave without repaying it. Bear that principle in mind.’

“What he said then tallies perfectly with what has happened now. Such scintillating foresight—His Eminence was no ordinary man. For nine years I have lived under the same roof with them, but my clothing and repast have been poor—my fields have been appropriated—I have nothing to my name, but neither have I eaten into that man’s stipend. All of this means I can make a clean break from him now. And since I have happily managed to guard this precious sword and not lose it, what cause have I to lament? Whom should I resent? The heavenly bodies in their motions have come full circle; the season has arrived for my loftiest aspirations to be fulfilled. I pray you, Master Inukawa, come with me to Koga. If you and I join our strength together to assist His Lordship there, we will overmatch even the best plans of the two Overseers. Think you not so?”

Thus did he seek to convince Gakuzō, as they conversed in secret, foreheads close together. Gakuzō listened, and reflected deeply before whispering his reply. “What you say is of course true for you, but it is not the same for me. I spoke before of how cruel the Estatesman was when my mother met her end, and how hateful that was to me. And yet, at the time I was but a child, helpless for all my vigor, and in the end I was made a menial in his household, which I remain to this day. That being said, I receive no set wages of silver, nothing other than my bowl of food and single robe—my debt of gratitude to him is light. However, light as it may be, I grew to manhood on the provender of his house—he is my master, and I his man. I will not join in his unrighteous, unconscionable plans, but to undertake a secret mission for him, reveal it to you, and then, milord, to run off together with you—I should be an unrighteous servant. What kind of man would that make me?

“Go to Koga, milord. I will part from you at dawn and return to Ōtsuka. There will be a double advantage in this. I will not have forsaken my unconscionable master—and something occurred to me yesterevening, as I, never meaning to, overheard Lady Hamaji and learned of the temper of her heart. Clever as she is, her passions are those of a woman; when pressed, she may well fall into unforeseen error. I can aid her in secret, and lay plans for her benefit. Then you, milord, will not gain an evil reputation for having abandoned a chaste woman. After my scheming and plotting, I shall take my leave openly, quit my master’s house and go to Koga. This will be better than running there together, do you not agree?”

Shino was impressed again and again by this speech. “Your reasoning is persuasive, and yet, if you return without having killed me, it must mean disaster for you.”

Gakuzō responded to these apprehensions with a grin. “Set your heart at ease. I shall make some small cuts on my arms and legs, to make it appear as if I were lightly wounded, and upon my return what I shall say is that when I tried to cut Lord Inuzuka down, he fought me ineluctably off, so that not only was I unable to kill him, but I received these wounds myself. I shall deceive them, and what can my master and his wife do about it? Leave everything to me, I pray you.”

He explained his plan with utter confidence, and Shino was filled with nearly unbearable gratitude. “Yea, but though they be false wounds, it pains my heart to allow you to hurt yourself—and yet to refuse would be to display what should be called womanish benevolence. I shall not rebel against your teaching,” he said.

Gakuzō rejoiced, and now that their secret conference was ended, each covered himself with bed silks and went to sleep for a while.

1. Kōshinzuka. A toponym that would have been familiar to Bakin’s Edo readers, as it marked the point where the Kiso highway entered Edo at Sugamo. The spot was named for a stone marker located there, connected to the metal-monkey vigil (see Chapter XXIII, note 5).

2. The hour of the ox follows that of midnight.

3. The wordplay in this passage turns on shinobuzuri, a textile pattern made using leaves of the shinobu or hare’s foot fern, resulting in a tangled design. The plant’s name is homophonous with a word meaning “to endure,” particularly to endure or suppress strong feelings of love or longing. Both shinobu and shinobuzuri are common terms in poetry.

4. The implication is that these acts would draw suspicion as to why one is in the melon patch or under the plum tree in the first place—perhaps to steal fruit. From the old yue fu poem “Junzi xing” (J. Kunshi kō).

5. A near quotation of a poem from section 14 of the Heian era poetry tale collection Ise monogatari (Tales of Ise).

6. “Trysting Hill,” or Ausaka, was the site of a barrier gate near Kyoto. The toponym was frequently used in love poetry because of the associations of its name.

7. 1478.

8. This passage several puns on toponyms, including the su (“nest”) of Sugami and the mino (“raincoat”) of Minowa.

9.Kiri ichimonji, more literally “paulownia” plus “the character for ‘one.’ ” As a name for a sword it utilizes the pun between “paulownia” and “cut,” and the visual resemblance between the character for one (a single horizontal line) and a sword slash.