Chapter XXXVI

Inuta, out of patience, fights Yamabayashi;

Nui, full of rancor, harms her corpus

As every man aspires to something different, our divergent courses often intersect. At this time, Kinta, Mōroku, and Karashirō, seeking to revisit the evening’s frustrations upon Kobungo, sneaked through the Konaya’s gate. They put ears to the door and peeked in through knotholes, only to find lamps burning brightly and voices speaking. “’Tis too soon yet,” they whispered, retreating. But then from behind them came another, heading toward them. All three as one felt that “We must not be seen!” and so in a tizzy they ducked beneath eaves and concealed themselves near the back gate.

At that very moment Yamabayashi Fusahachi, having sent away his wife Nui and dispatched his mother Myōshin to escort her away, but having misgivings about her father’s answer, to which misgivings he added certain thoughts of his own, had decided to face Kobungo and settle the previous evening’s score. He had come alone, at a late hour, quietly approaching the Konaya’s door that he might espy what went on within. Kobungo sat with Nui at the edge of the room, and Fusahachi could, ever so faintly, hear her moaning and him reasoning with her. “I should not enter until I have thoroughly deduced the situation,” thought Fusahachi, and so, placing a hand on the doorpost, he leaned closer and eavesdropped.

Unsuspecting of this, Nui finally stopped weeping and gathered her thoughts. “What shall I say to my father when he returns? How am I to explain the calamity that has, through my own lack of foresight, befallen me? Ah, worthless is a woman.”

To Kobungo she said, “Well, now, my brother. Give me your appraisal of the situation, if you will. Rather than thinking vain thoughts, let us put Daihachi to sleep in the storeroom, and await our father’s return. Oh, but my chest hurts.”

She stood up, but Kobungo blocked her way. “Oh, no,” he said. “My word, Nui, where are you going?”

He spoke quickly to detain her, but she, taken aback, peered into his face and said, “This is a nefarious thing to reproach me for. I may have come here because I was sent away, but it is still my father’s house. What crime can there be in going to the storeroom?”

Hardly had she spoken when he shook his head. “It may be your father’s house, but while he is away you must do as your elder brother says. Do you not know that tonight is the Metal-Monkey Vigil? I have made a petition in prayer and undertaken an abstinence, that no one from another house may stay here, even a relation. How can I throw open the barrier to the inner room, where none may enter, and render vain the vow of my heart?”

He fulminated, as if with a heart full of wrath, but in reality it was nonsense, obfuscation to prevent her seeing Shino, who lay ailing in the small parlor beyond. She sniffed back tears and said, “I think your words are hollow. Did you sneak a pretty consort in here tonight? You may conceal it from others, but how can there be any such reserve between us? I am your sister.”

She spoke resentfully and stepped forward. His eyes flashed as he replied, “A strange and coarse conjecture! There is nothing here but my prayerful petition. How can I allow you past this barrier having once secured it, though I be suspected? If you would force your way into this storeroom, then you would act like a demon, seeking to interrupt my abstinence. Then I cannot keep you here. I pity you, but bid you leave, you and your child: spend the night under the eaves! I speak from the heart!” And as he cursed and chastised her, he grabbed and pulled her, shoving her forcefully into the door frame.

“Ah!” she screamed, and the mother’s voice shocked the child awake, so that now they cried and shouted in unison.

“As well they might,” thought Kobungo. As he looked at them, his heart, too, began to weaken, so he stirred it up to demoniac strength. He must not let their crying carry into the inner room. He kicked the wicket open with a bang and tried to push her out, but as he did, a hand reached in from without, grasped Nui’s shoulder, pushed her back, and then in a flash someone entered the inn.

Kobungo fixed him with a stare.

“Is that you, Fusahachi?”

“Kobungo!”

“What are you thinking, coming here like this in the middle of the night?”

“Need you ask? I think you know I have something more to say, a sequel to the set-to: I would make a clean break, and her a stranger, and so all night—”

“This is why you came?”

“It is.” As thus they catechized each other neither man gave way, and Fusahachi, with this answer, pulled the wicket shut.

Then Kobungo retreated to the mat on which he had been sitting, picked up a sword, and brought it close to him. Fusahachi did not wait but lifted the long sidearm that flashed by his side, even as he hitched up the hem of his garment and strode into the center of the main house with a look that made the room seem small around him. He sat down next to Kobungo, baring his shins and crossing his legs boldly, pressing one knee to the floor and fixing Kobungo with a glare.

Nui, seeing her husband arrive unexpectedly and at such an advanced hour, seeing his mood and the color rising in her brother’s face, and yet unable to fathom the depths of their hearts, felt that her breast was like a rocky strand buffeted by perilous waves that the moment must either swim or sink beneath, and powerless to calm them for long she wept as she held the sniffling Daihachi by her side; even as she offered it to her son, her breast shrank under her infinite sufferings. She backed away, retreated, and though her heart was not in it with her free hand she had nothing else to do but push the lamp over to the wall, quietly raise the wick, and pray in vain to the wick-head while moaning—was her life to be extinguished?

Fusahachi did not so much as glance at her, but folded his arms and raised his voice, saying, “Kobungo, if you are a man you will be ashamed of the way I shamed you, treading on you at Cape Shiori. For my part it is immature to bandy with a coward who will make no reply no matter how he is chidden or embarrassed, but I saw and heard a few things that move me to speak. Now, then, I have left my wife, but had not returned her possessions, her robes and accessories, and that nagged at me like something caught in a back tooth, for it could become an objection raised at some later date, an excuse for some to say I had succumbed to greed. I have brought them to give them back. Receive them now.”

Kobungo would not listen, but said, “I wondered what you were here for. So you are returning Nui’s clothes, and for that you cause a commotion at this advanced hour. I suppose tonight should be no exception. I give to you the same answer I gave to Dame Myōshin a short time ago: that I will stretch a point and let my sister stay here although my father is not home, because seeing the face of a mother-in-law more feeling than any in the world was inspiring to me, but that a proper reply must wait for my father’s return. Perhaps you had not heard this.”

Fusahachi cut him off with a scornful laugh. “Will he return tomorrow, or the next day, or perhaps never again in this life? How long can I be expected to wait for Bungobei under such vague terms? I, too, am a man. I have brought these things to return them to you, and you say you cannot accept them: can I let this pass so easily? Among the fashionable patterns of Nui’s treasured robes—the Kyoto Fawn, the Mino Hachijō, the Shikama blue¹—there is one you will want. Do you not recognize this?”

With that he reached into his bosom and pulled out a piece of bloodstained hempen cloth. “What think you?” he asked, holding it out.

Kobungo looked at it and was astonished. “This cannot be!”

He reached for it, but Fusahachi brushed his hand away and shifted the cloth to his own left hand, saying, “You want it, do you not? You should. The other night in the reed bed by the inlet—” Kobungo advanced on his knees—“when the night was so dark one could not tell black from white—

—I was carrying a bath cloth bundle on my shoulder

—When an unknown someone came up from behind

—And detained me: I

—Shook him off

—We pitted our skill against each other in the night, black as night should be

—I tugged at the bundle, tearing it, and from the seam spilled this cloth

—While I, unsuspecting, made good my retreat; and after I had returned home, so many things happened that I never noticed until now, and here

—You see it, and does it crush your chest?

—So the villainy I encountered then was yours, Fusahachi? As was the writ of divorcement I read just now?

—Those three-and-a-half lines, like a beauty seen in the dark or from a distance, I happened to see in the gloaming, by the roadside, and I picked them up: then I gave them to my mother, again on the roadside; they are a likeness of Shino.

—Then you know all my secrets

—and sent away my wife as a precaution, to protect myself lest she get caught within the cordon-rope. It would not do for word to leak out about him you hide here, neglected as a dog in a house of mourning: Inuzuka. I shall get, as a reward for all my amity, the price of some sake. If you would loosen the fetters of your father, held bound in the Estatesman’s mansion, then you will capture Shino and hand him over to me.”²

“Nay, I am no grasping schemer like you, to shelter a criminal.”

Hardly had he spoken when Fusahachi clutched the guard of his sidearm and stood it up on the butt of its scabbard. “Will you still dissemble when it comes to this pass? Reject me, and I will walk into the back and tie him up myself. Which will it be?”

They shot each other looks as sharp as daggers as their dispute threatened to bloom into a fight, for neither cowered; both were just as slow to back down as snails locking horns.

With no outlet for her anguish, Nui was flustered, confused. She stepped between her brother and her husband to push them apart, saying, “This is reckless—someone outside will hear! Brother of mine, take care that in your cleverness you do not misapprehend. If His Eminence our father is now in bonds, as I have only now learned, then it is for another’s sake, and there is none who can change places with him. My spouse, you, too, are headstrong. What will you gain by capturing a criminal, if it means gloating in the face of hardship here? The waves that pound the strand shatter when they hit it; the soil, when rained upon, firms up. Say what you think, just as you think it, and when you have said it all the fire in your breast will go out. Speak fondly with one another, then save our father: can any greater happiness than this be found?”

She fretted as she looked to one and then the other, trying to make peace: her voice faded, as if clouded o’er, as, like the crickets underneath the porch, she found her wells of crying had dried up, and silence reigned, for a little while.

Kobungo, though, while hardly pleased with how things went, yet knew that Fusahachi, tenacious in his hate, had already discovered his great secret; Kobungo had no thought to spare for his father’s admonitions to endure, or for the paper strips with which he had bound his blade. “I cannot hand him over, not while this locust-husk body still draws breath,” he thought, and would not back down an inch. Rather, he gripped his sword tightly, that if the other stood he might strike him down; perspiration from his fingers moistened the peg.

Then did Fusahachi’s ire grow greater. “What a repulsive sight—a girl playing judge! Weep and wheedle if you like, but I am in the treasure trove, and I will not leave empty-handed. Stand too close to the fire, and you might get burned. Get back, I say!”

And in his wrath he aimed a kick at her that went astray, his toe catching Daihachi in the ribs. The child could not even cry out, but ceased breathing then and there. Nui, clutching the child, writhed on the floor, sobbing.

To all this Fusahachi paid no attention. “Shino must be in the little parlor,” he said, advancing. Kobungo stood so as to block his way, but Fusahachi, quick on the draw, aimed sharp blows of his fists at Kobungo, who fended them off with the guard of his sword—the strips of paper snapped along with his patience, and the cutting edge of Kobungo’s enmity was exposed. They drew and crossed swords, grinding them against each other as if on whetstones, raising a gale of blades and kicking up dust as they fought.

Nui, at long last, raised herself, only to see that her child had stopped breathing. “What shall I do? Oh, the grief!” Weeping and hating she looked around at her brother and husband, balancing on the boundary between life and death, bound by a duel in which now one, now the other, had the upper hand; she felt their peril, even as she lamented her child. Her husband had abandoned her—her son had been killed—she was alone, rashly clinging to a life with no meaning and all the sufferings of existence’s burning house. Suddenly her aspirations returned to her, heartening her—if the gemmed thread should snap beneath the blade, let it snap, she thought. She flung Daihachi from her, stood up, and, with a determination that the abundance of her sorrow would not permit to waver, cried, “You are thoughtless, unfeeling! You have taken leave of your senses! Stop this!” And with that, she stepped between the naked, clashing blades.

“Get back! You are in peril!” cried Kobungo, glaring at her.

Unable to draw close to him or stand still, she lurched and clung, her womanly concentration flinging her body at her husband’s sleeve—she clutched it, but he, without a pause, shook her off—with wrath in his gaze Fusahachi looked at her and said, as he kicked her off her feet, “You are in my way!”

Bodkins snapped and flew like arrows loosed—her coiffure tore apart, her hair hung wild, disheveled, tangled like her limbs as she lay grasping at his feet—he kicked her over, and as she tried to rise something glittered above her head—her husband’s blade—in mid-stride, trying to strike Kobungo, he swung his sword, but his hand went awry—he slashed Nui roughly beneath the breast—’twas a deep wound in a vital spot, and she could not endure it long—she gave a cry and fell.

“What is this?” cried Fusahachi, astonished. “I have you!” cried Kobungo, seizing the moment and pressing forward—his naked blade flashed lightning and snicker-snack split Fusahachi’s right shoulder open. Fusahachi dropped his sword with a clatter and fell heavily on his rump—Kobungo raised his blade, brandishing it to strike again, but beneath him Fusahachi hurriedly raised his left hand to stop him, saying, “Ho, there, Inuta—wait—I have something I would say!” As he lifted his head his gossamer breath came in gasps due to the suffering his deep wound caused him.

Kobungo, suspicious, never relaxed his guard, even as in a flash he adjusted his grip on his bloody sword and sank to one knee, fixing Fusahachi with a glare. “Yamabayashi, you coward, if you have something to say, say it quickly—but why should I listen, at a moment like this?”

At this scolding Fusahachi opened his eyes wide and said, “You have reason to doubt me, but when I tell you what my true intentions have been from the outset, you, who so particularly submit to righteousness, will not be able to cut me down. How could you? But first, my wound.” He raised his arm.

Kobungo, conscious that he did not understand, wiped the thick blood from his blade and hurriedly put it away in its scabbard. He then tore strips from the sleeves of his singlet, tied them together with his hand towel, and wrapped them tightly around Fusahachi’s wound, knotting the ends.

“Now, then, Fusahachi,” he said. “Your wound is shallow. If you would speak, I shall listen. What is it, Yamabayashi?”

Thus addressed, Fusahachi caught his breath and spoke. “Brother—Lord Inuta—my unreasonable conduct at Cape Shiori was an effort, and not the first, to provoke you to anger, that you might strike me and I might save you from your difficulty. But it did not work: your obedience to your father’s remonstrance and your patience were things I could not overcome. I eventually grew embarrassed in the face of your rare courage, and had to leave. But I could not allow myself to quit. Having already shared my plans with my mother, I pretended to divorce Nui, that I might try your mood. That was yesterevening, and now in the night I burst in here and at long last achieved my purpose.”

Kobungo, with knitted brow, said, “Yamabayashi, I do not understand. I am Nui’s brother, but you owe me no great debt of gratitude. Why, then, pursue your aspirations even unto killing yourself? This is my first doubt. Then, sir, even if you do as you wish and lose your life tonight—I wish that you might not—it cannot save me from the hardship that presses upon me this eventide. This is my second doubt. Why, then?”

Chidingly he asked this, and Fusahachi listened, then answered with greater courage in his voice. “All is as it should be, considering what has been. Hear me out, I pray you, though I go on at some length. Explanations of samsara, reasonings upon karma: these are things I saw in storybooks; never did it occur to me that they might be visited upon my head. To confess like this in the vanity of extremity may seem a shameless act, but I will. When the illness of my father, who departed this world in the autumn of the year before last, had reached a perilous state, he called my mother and I to his pillow in secret and said:

“ ‘I rose from a menial here to master, and now my only child, Fusahachi, is grown. I am past fifty years of age, and the desires of my lifetime have been granted me, above my station. However, I have never revealed to you, Toyama, much less you, Fusahachi, my true lineage, for I bear a shame in my heart. Now, though, if I die without telling you what is on my mind, it will be an obstacle to me in that darkling land. And so I will tell you alone, in secret.

“ ‘Lo, my father was Bokuhei of Somaki, a farmer in the village of Aomiko. By nature he loved the martial arts and manly gallantry. He therefore conceived a great admiration for the martial artistry of master Kanamari Hachirō Takayoshi, a loyal hereditary retainer of the former lord of the territory, the Minister of the Court Jin’yo Nagasanosuke Mitsuhiro, and went into service in Takayoshi’s house, that he might receive from him the principles of swordsmanship. After he had spent several years in this manner, a sycophantic retainer named Yamashita Sadakane became Chancellor to the Jin’yo, pursuing drunkenness and lasciviousness, using the folk of the province badly, and showing signs of usurpation in the bud; but Mitsuhiro did not notice, and indeed hounded master Kanamari Hachirō, along with any other who would remonstrate with him, out of his court; his house became disordered.

“ ‘My father had a spirit of righteousness about him. In his wrath and indignation on behalf of the villagers and of the Kanamari clan, he began to wonder how he could strike Sadakane down. To this end he enlisted a friend who shared his aspirations, a mighty man named Mukuzō of Susaki, and together they watched for Sadakane to go on an excursion to the mountains. They hid in ambuscade by a paddy-path at Ochiba, their hearts fixated upon the horse he always rode. They shot and felled the rider, but he turned out not to be their enemy, but rather Mitsuhiro, the lord of the territory. Mukuzō was struck down on the spot, while my father engaged in bloody battle with a close retainer of the lord’s, Shichirō of the Nako; he cut Shichirō down, but was himself taken alive, and in the end he was executed.

“ ‘The error of this incident was due to a plot of Sadakane’s, by which my father allowed himself recklessly to be led astray unto violence against the lord of the territory. Mister Kanamari aided the Satomi, rendering merit and establishing a reputation, after which he refused emolument and committed suicide. I have always heard that this, too, was due to my father.

“ ‘At the time I was fourteen, and my mother had already passed away. Alone, I left Awa an exile; I drifted here, where a villager took me under his wing, and I became his menial. From that time forward, for many years, I devoted myself to serving my late master, and he rejoiced and loved me for it. He must have thought I was worthy, for in the absence of a boy to inherit the headship of the house, he adopted me as a son-in-law.

“ ‘However, this year I heard a vague rumor that Fusahachi’s father-in-law Bungobei, with whom we have been legal relatives since last year, is the younger brother of Shichirō of the Nako. Should word reach him that his son-in-law is the grandson of his brother’s enemy, Bokuhei of Somaki, how could he be so simpering as to allow his daughter to be paired with Fusahachi? No, he would surely take her back. Of course if he does not know there can be no quarrel, but to hide such hatred in the bonds of affection is to leave behind sorrow for one’s descendants. And yet Nui is such a clever bride, one of whom all men might be envious, that it pains me beyond endurance to think of making her leave, and of separating my grandson, that she produced so soon, from her breast. And so I draw close to the appointed hour of my death with great suffering, oppressed by the thought that it was an evil karma that has brought us ignorantly into relations with Nako’s younger brother, and that my grandson’s fist, which is not like others’, might be the curse of those lords [meaning jin’yo, nako, and kanamari], dragging out their hatred unto the third generation.

“ ‘Nothing is better for dispelling hatred than virtue performed in obscurity. Fusahachi, if you act in your father’s stead to cleanse the name your grandfather besmirched—if you dispel those ancient grudges—truly it will be an act of unsurpassed filial piety. Indeed, Fusahachi, you have a spirit of manly valor that resembles your grandfather’s, and a similar love of the martial arts. You would not stint at offering your life for the sake of righteousness. Toyama, you, too, must possess a manly heart: exhort and encourage my son, I pray you.’

“These were my father’s last words, delivered privily. As you can see, he was a man alert to duty. I may not be his equal, but I made up my mind: as his son, should I not carry on his aspirations? And so it was from then on that, to cleanse my grandfather’s besmirched name, I removed the tree element from the ‘Soma’ in his name Somaki, and combined it with the ‘ki’ in his name, calling myself Yamabayashi.³ And it was from then on that I wanted to do something for my father-in-law Bungobei and his son, to fulfill my aspirations, so different from those of others, and then to bring my father’s last words out into the open for them. But I had neither chance nor means to display my true righteousness.

“Thus it was that in that wrestling match at Yawata some days ago in which you and I, milord, were singled out by the ascetics to represent them, when I had neither desire to win nor hope of matching you, milord, for skill or strength, I furthermore fervently wished I might lose, at all costs, so that when at length I did, it was joy to me: how could I have been jealous of you then? Some said I was, or some such thing, but it was only the conniving of the envious.

“And so yesterday, thinking to call on Uncle [meaning bungobei] that we might see the Gion Festival and the washing of the god-bier, I made my leisurely way to the beach here. As I was crossing the bridge by the inlet, I saw Uncle away in the distance, in a boat among the reeds at the water’s edge—he was deep in conversation with two suspicious youths—nor could I hail him out of the blue. So I approached nearer, and, without intending it, I eavesdropped. I heard the prodigious tale of how Inuzuka and Inukai were reunited, doubtless after having known each other in a previous life. I heard of how Your Lordship and they possess similar beads, and even marks. Each new revelation astonished me more, and I could not have left even had I wished to—I hid myself in the reed bed and pondered. If I had such a bead and such a scar, then might I join the ranks of such as you and be counted among the champions of the world, but in my past lives I must have been evil, for I have no such thing, and though I desire to be bound to you in righteousness, I have no hope of it being vouchsafed me.

“However, even if I cannot join your league, this is still Chiba territory, and they are allied with the resident of Koga Palace. ‘If Inuzuka and Inukai are being hunted,’ thought I, ‘and have come to hardship because of it, then shall I not join my strength in secret to my father-in-law’s and save them, even at the risk of my life? This, then, would be the time to carry out my father’s last words’: thus did I make up my mind, unbeknownst to anyone.

“And so, as the day quickly grew dark, the others headed for the Konaya in the company of its old master, while you, milord, remained behind alone to push the boat away from the shore, after which you turned to leave, carrying the bloody clothes on your back. So full of regret and longing was I that I thought to have a word with you in private—I stepped out of the reeds, but I found it difficult to speak. I sought brazenly to detain you—Your Lordship shook me off, thinking I was a villain—I could not call out, but stood there and challenged you for a time, until you delivered me a painful blow to the rib. I fell, and in an instant you had run away.

“But you had dropped a hempen cloth. Should someone else find it, I feared, there must be trouble, and so at length I picked it up. The hour had grown late. I returned home. Then, before I had even told my mother, a decree went out from the Estatesman that Mister Inuzuka was to be arrested. Then it occurred to me: my father-in-law is an innkeeper. He might try to shelter those men, but with the multitude of people passing through his doors, it would not be long before they were exposed, and not only Inuzuka and Inukai, but the master and his son, too, must be held guilty—not that he and you might be expected to produce those men, now that you had bound yourself to them in righteousness. No, you should find it hard to escape your perilous straits if I did not save you from them, giving my life in the act.

“Peering at you from the reed bed at the inlet yesterday, it seemed to me that Inuzuka’s appearance resembled my own. Therefore, were my head to be presented to the Koga messenger, with a lie that it was Master Inuzuka’s, then not only would my father-in-law and his son escape retribution, but, even more convenient to your needs, Master Inuzuka would be able to flee: nothing could be better.

“Nevertheless there was something unbecoming about this plan. Out of my love of wrestling I had always refused to shave my forelocks; resemble each other though we might, I realized that I could not deceive anyone with my hair in such a state. Before long I had made up a story about how, having lost in the wrestling at Yawata, I had vowed never to set foot in a ring again as long as I lived. This morning, all of a sudden, I allowed my forelocks to be shaved, and when I took up a mirror to look at my reflection, I found I very closely resembled Master Inuzuka, in both countenance and age.

“Thus, my plan was at last decided. I told my mother in secret thus-and-such regarding what I thought to do; she wept, and would not allow it; nor could I, when it came to it, beg her to allow it. But as I was writing my suicide note she spied on me, and she must have felt that she could not prevent me, for through her tears she finally gave her consent. My mother, too, is alert to duty—she has a manly spirit—and so once I had taken my lifetime’s leave of her and said to her everything in my mind, I made as if I were suddenly divorcing Nui, returning her to her father’s house, for she would know of the affair, and I left the matter of the divorce to my mother, while I made a hasty departure for this beach.

“At Cape Shiori, as chance would have it, I met Your Lordship on your way home. At the time there were no passersby to be seen. It was a perfect spot for me to get hit in. ‘Your Lordship may have no thought of using me as a proxy,’ thought I, ‘but I must resemble Master Inuzuka in your eyes as in anybody else’s, and after my death it will occur to you to take my head and substitute it for his.’ And so with no hesitation I assaulted and abused you unreasonably, with the set-to on the beach as a pretext—I kicked you over, but you would not fight back—thinking only of your father, your dutiful heart would endure my abuse, and I had no recourse. I could not achieve my purpose, so we parted. I invited Kantoku for a drink of sake on the way, but sent him ahead, and slipped away, doubling back, and when I had come as far as the sheaf-stack, you, milord, were already set about with hardships. My father-in-law Lord Bungobei was being led away in fetters, surrounded by troops belonging to the general sent out from Koga to arrest Inuzuka—Niiori Hodayū, I think he is called.

“Alas! Anxiety roiled my breast, but there was no hope of saving him. I hid in the shadows of a thicket; I saw and heard the whole thing. Thus it was that when Your Lordship had escaped the tiger’s maw and hastened off toward your home, I noticed that a piece of paper had been left behind. I picked it up and looked at it. It was the likeness of Shino. First the cloth, and now the picture: ’twas a mysterious thing, but happy for our affair, that they were found by nobody else but me. My heart was emboldened to think that tonight I might accomplish my aim.

“I went to the trysting-place to wait for my mother, as we had arranged, and whispered to her all that had happened, and gave her the likeness. Everything was in order that we might excite Your Lordship to kill me this evening. To that end, I lurked near your back gate all evening, and learned all about Master Inuzuka’s great illness, and Your Lordship’s sufferings.

“What I wish, Lord Inuta—Elder Brother—is that you might take my head and put it to good use, find a way to save Uncle from bondage and Master Inuzuka from danger, and dispel old hatreds. If you do this, then I shall have rendered an instance of merit, and in spite of Bokuhei of Somaki long ago transgressing against his lord when he meant to strike at Sadakane, and, what is more, killing Shichirō of the Nako, so that his teacher and former master, he of the Kanamari clan, must needs slit his belly. In spite of this, his grandson Fusahachi, by such a display of virtue, will have saved a dutiful son and righteous man from undeserved guilt, and loosed his own father-in-law’s fetters. If I could leave such an epitaph, if only in the words of men, then my grandfather’s name would be purified, my father’s parting lessons would not have been in vain, and my joy in a glorious death would be greater than if I had been granted a hundred years of life, wealth, and station.

“My own joy is, of course, alloyed with pity for Nui and Daihachi. That the three of us, parents and child, should all die on the same day and in the same place is also, perhaps, due to my grandfather’s evil karma. I told my wife and son nothing whatsoever of my secret intent; they knew only that I had directed my wrath at them, and forced them to leave; they must hate me indeed for it. Yet for my part I am desperate, and Nui is not yet twenty: it would have been pitiless, reckless, to leave her a widow after I am gone. Divorcing her on some pretext would be to her benefit, I thought, and that is why I treated her with such harshness: now I regret it. How could I have sent her back had I known it would come to this? I dispatched her, and with Daihachi in tow, because I would rely on Uncle to look after him until he was grown. I thought thus but idly, erroneously—although, Lord Inuta, could samsara and karmic retribution really extend so far as to have me slay my wife and my son with my own hands, before finally killing myself? My evil fate is sealed. Nui’s untimely death was a visitation of her husband’s lingering karma. When I think of Uncle’s laments and Your Lordship’s hatred, I cannot show my face. Forgive me, I pray you.”

He bowed worshipfully as he said this, raising his blood-stained left hand. Kobungo had pricked up his ears to hear Fusahachi’s tale, lengthy despite his deep wounds, as he put on display the sincerity of his heart, his filial piety and obedience, his integrity and righteousness, all of which were of a kind rarely to be found, and now Kobungo patted his chest and blinked his wondering eyes. He wiped away his tears and said:

“I had not expected this, Yamabayashi, milord: the temper of your heart, as you kill yourself out of benevolence to dispel ancient angers in obedience to your father’s last words, is one of exquisite subtlety. Your Lordship’s grandfather may have erred, and his crime may have been most serious, but can there have been, in Japan or China, many instances of the filial piety and obedience his descendant in the third generation has shown in cleansing his besmirched name? In countenance Master Inuzuka does resemble Your Lordship: but ’tis very rare for even a loyal retainer to sacrifice his life in the stead of a lord who is his master of many generations, while Your Lordship is only related to me by marriage, and you know not Master Inuzuka, and furthermore you have appeared displeased with me ever since the wrestling at Yawata. Therefore even as the pinch pressed in upon me this evening, I had no desire to speak to another of my sadness and sufferings, nor to borrow wisdom from another. A proxy, moreover, was a thing for which I could not hope to plan, and indeed it never occurred to me, but now chance has aided me, and that has happened which will be for me both a way to loosen my father’s fetters and a means of saving a man and warrior with whom I am leagued. I rejoice, but meanwhile my sorrow is increased.

“I never wished to kill one man to save another. Master Inuzuka feels the same. And yet to reject you now, to refuse to follow your will, would be a case of once bitten, twice shy. How can I let Your Lordship die a dog’s death here, with no profit to yourself? As for Nui’s and Daihachi’s untimely deaths, their unintended sufferings fill my breast with tears of grief—regret for them gnaws at my innards—but they are the workings of cruel fate, and there is nothing to do but bewail them.

“And yet my sister, when she ran afoul of a blade and killed herself, did not die a dog’s death. In my house there is a prodigious remedy for the tetanus that has been handed down through the generations. If one takes four cups each of the lifeblood of a male and a female yet young in years, mixes them, and bathes the wound in it, the sufferer will be revived from death and his wound healed, as a broom sweeps away dust. This remedy will hit the target a hundred times in a hundred, like Yang Youji shooting the willow leaves at a hundred paces⁴: it never fails. My father transmitted it to me orally, saying it came from my grandfather, Shichirō of the Nako; but this medicine cannot be found for the seeking, and so I simply concluded it was not to be administered in this case.

“Master Inuzuka’s life has been in danger from the tetanus since that dawn. Master Inukai slipped away this morning to Shiba Cove in Musashi in search of an effective remedy known to be there, but the way is long and he has not yet returned. Even if I trust to the means Your Lordship provides, and evade this evening’s exigency, what profit should it be if he dies all the same?

“And yet with Nui’s untimely death, I have, without planning to, obtained the lifeblood of a man and a woman. Is this happiness in misery? The desires of Heaven and man alike are as the horse of the old man of Sai.⁵ What is this, if not darkling help from the bright gods and buddhas, their mercy upon Master Inuzuka’s filial heart and righteous nature, excelling all others? Let your heart be at ease, Yamabayashi, for though Your Lordship and I may have been enemies in a previous life, at each other’s throats, yet now our old enmity has melted away, and the duty of righteousness we owe each other is weightier than a stone it would take a thousand men to move. Your merits, your virtues, shall be long memorialized in the mouths of men as a model of goodness. Nevertheless, that such a mighty man, with aspirations so stalwart—a man we would have begged to join our league, despite the lack of a bead or any hint of a mark, and trusted all the more to our future because of him—that such a man, along with his wife and child, should lose his life here and now is cause for rancor upon rancor. Even your clever and manly mother, when she hears of this, will be at last devastated—it pains me to think of how she will grieve. Oh, what is to be done?”

He said no more, words dammed by love and sorrow, suffering, the sadness of the floating world, while came, adrift upon the air, the bell tolling the third part of the hour of the ox,⁶ its echoes only adding to the pathos.

End of Book III of Volume IV of the Lives of the Eight Dogs of the Satomi

1. All three were popular textile patterns or colors; only the third seems to have been common before the seventeenth century.

2. In the original, the foregoing dialogue is presented and punctuated in a distinctive way that suggests the rapid-fire exchange of lines on the kabuki stage. For a discussion of another such passage, see Walley, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Eight Dogs: Part One (2021).

3. The first character in “Somaki” is composed of the elements “tree” and “mountain;” the second character in the name is “tree.” Removing the “tree” element from the first character leaves “mountain” (yama), and adding a second tree to the character “tree” creates “grove” (bayashi).

4. Yang Youji was a famed archer of the state of Chu; this feat is spoken of in chapter 51 of the Han-era history Han shu (J. Kansho).

5. See Chapter XXXI, note 2.

6. The hour of the ox followed that of midnight.