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

Volume IV, Book I

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

Chapter XXXI

At the water pavilion, a little boat aids both heroes;

At the river village, an old fisherman recognizes a brace of hounds

Did not the ancients say that good fortune and ill are intertwined like a rope?¹ Man, in all his comings and goings, is like the horse of the old man of Sai.² When happiness approaches, there does calamity lurk,³ on the one hand even as on the other: one may be aware of this, and yet who has ever known it in all its fullness? Take pity on Inuzuka Shino, who, with his father’s dying injunction clasped in his heart and his father’s memento the precious sword bound to his waist, passed through years of suffering and hardship before finally gaining his elusive chance, seizing which he brought them himself to far Koga, where he might make a name for himself, and revive his house; but this good fortune turned to ill when Rainmaker, which had been changed for another, turned out not to be the original, and Shino was left unable to assuage the hatred of those newly made enemies who would rend him limb from limb—the affair quickly got out of hand. His only thought being to avoid the present embarrassment, he slashed his way through the many who surrounded him and climbed to the roof of the Flowing Fragrance Pavilion, but once there he found there was no escape for him on either hand. How painful even to imagine the thoughts that must have been his then!

Meanwhile Inukai Kenpachi Nobumichi, having been bound in the prison for months though he had committed no crime, found his calamity converted to the happiness of amnesty, his fetters loosed, as he was tasked with the capture of a man—“Catch Inuzuka Shino,” was the task for which he was so peremptorily singled out—and though he thought that “I have no wish to be employed in such a manner that my own face depends on the sadness of another,” yet he felt he should not be allowed to refuse, so weighty was his lord’s command. Therefore, lofty though the tower was, he mounted unseen the eaves of the second of its three stories, and when he looked around he saw the distance opening beneath his feet, the nearness of the clouds. The sun beat down unbearably upon him, for it was the twenty-first day of the sixth month, and this day like the last was steamy with no rain to break the heat; the rooftiles stretched before him, baking in the sun, ceaseless in their undulations like the waves of the sea, while beneath him surged the mighty river, which, true to its name, the Firstborn of the East, coursed and recoursed to the sea of life and death: and at the water’s edge a little boat, its scull long lost, its progress halted now. “As is my enemy’s,” thought Kenpachi—“and now how might I beach and tether him?” The flying squirrel travels branch to branch with no more grace or lightness than that which Kenpachi employed in climbing to the third-story roof, the apex of his ascent, and there he found no cover, not a thing to shield him in the piercing glare: as he and his opponent traded glares, searching each for the other’s weaknesses, they were like serpents by the stupa seeking to ravage the nest of the ibis that perched thereon.

In the yard, the Minister of the Court Nariuji, surrounded by Yokohori Fuhito Arimura and the other senior and junior vassals, seated himself on his camp stool and raised his gaze to see “Which shall the victor be?” while on the pavilion’s east and west were massed cuirassed men and officers by the score, spears and glaives glinting in the sun, some leaning on their bows as crutches, arrows on their backs, necks craned to watch the fight so that “if he should fall, we might stop him in his tracks.” And neither was this all: outside the wall, like an unbroken thread stretching from the distance, flowed the river, compassing the castle, washing its foundation stones, so that even if Shino should manage to prevail at arms and prove his thews the mightier, should somehow defeat Kenpachi, unless he borrowed Mozi’s soaring kite he could hardly hope to fly away, nor could he climb back down to the ground without Lu Ban’s cloud-ladder.⁴ He was not a bird, but he was caught in a net; he was not a beast, but he was cornered on the hunting ground. Only three inches of windpipe kept him alive now; should it be severed, then all his affairs must come to rest. It seemed he must never escape.

Then Shino reflected, “I cut down all the men-at-arms who tried to follow me up to the first and second-story roofs, and none have gotten close to me since. Now this one alone comes climbing up after me. He must be a mighty man of some repute. Does he have the courage of the Kashiwade Minister Hatebe, who destroyed the tiger with his hands?⁵ Does he have the strength of Saburō of the Tomita, who tore apart a stag’s antlers?⁶ Even so, he is but a solitary foe. Let us grapple, let us trade thrusts: how hard can it be for him to die? He seems a worthy enemy: I shall show him something worth seeing.”

He wiped his bloody blade on his trouser seam and stood on the roof-ridge like a rock in rapids to await the coming of his enemy. Meanwhile, Kenpachi reflected that “Yon Inuzuka’s martial skills and bravery make him by nature an enemy ten thousand men could not defeat. However, if I fail to capture him, and depend on the aid of others, then there will be no use in my having been plucked from the prison for this duty. Whether I capture him or whether I am struck down, victory or defeat shall be decided in a moment.”

These being his thoughts, he neither doubted nor flinched, but shouting “By His Lordship’s decree!” he brandished his truncheon and mounted, as if flying, to the roof-ridge, approaching Shino on the left, seeking to close with him, but the latter would not let him approach.

“I accept!” cried the latter, raising a sharp blade-gale—Kenpachi received it and brushed it aside—he left no opening for the myriad darting edges, but deflected them all, now with a high stroke, now with a low—he kept his footing on the slippery tiles and constantly advanced, the jailer’s secret skills the better to employ, but the other’s finely tempered techniques were not inferior—the line of his blade as it came down from on high still missed here and there, as thrust for thrust, parry for parry, the victor was yet unknown. In the courtyard, sweat moistened every palm of master and men, officers and soldiers, as eyes stared unblinking, breath was bated, and attentions fixed themselves on the distant struggle.

Meanwhile Inuzuka Shino, having gained a worthy foe in Kenpachi’s by no means negligible artistry at arms, found his own courage doubling now. Each coming blow he beat back until sparks flew from the tip of his blade—his sword clanged and their voices rang—and they were like two tigers challenging each other in the mountain fastnesses through which a gale roared, or like two dragons fighting in verdant crevasse with clouds billowing forth. Had it been spring, it would have been thought the haze on the peaks, but since it was summer it looked like a rainbow in the evening sky, the blur of their mortal struggle on the roof-ridge so lofty, their unexampled show of skill; the chain that Kenpachi wore, the edges of his vambraces, were cut and slashed clean through, and still he would not draw his sword. But Shino’s blade could last no longer, and he himself, since taking his first light wound, had grown progressively conscious of his pain. But he measured his steps carefully so as neither to slacken nor to yield, and kept up an assault under which any man must have folded; however, Kenpachi deflected this and gave him blow for blow with his fist—he got inside his opponent’s guard, and with a cry of “Aha!” he aimed a thumping truncheon blow at his brow—this Shino received with his sword, which broke at the hilt—the blade flew off into the distance.

“I have you now!” cried Kenpachi, immediately closing with his foe—in which motion Shino caught him with his left—each now clutched the other with his good hand and sought to twist and topple his opponent—one cried “heave” and the other cried “ho”—they pushed and pulled and powerfully stomped—and then, as one, they missed their footing, slipped, and rolled toward the riverward side of the roof, tumbling like bales of rice from an upset cart.

The slope was steep, as if the rooftiles had been cleft from a cliff. They could not hope to arrest the force of their movement, but neither loosed his grip upon the other. From the roof they fell, hundreds of feet to the far-flowing river below, but they never reached its bed, because their fall was well-directed, and they landed, heavily, one on top of the other, in the bottom of the little boat moored at the water’s edge, while the craft careened and stood in standing waves upon its side in the smacking water and spray. Its tether snapped, and the boat was spat into the very middle of the arrow-swift current, which was augmented by a tailwind and an ebbing tide; and so, seduced by the water, the boat raced downriver for an unknown goal.

The officers and men were in a state of uproar at this unexpected scene, and cursed them, asking, are they here? or there? Only the men on guard inside the pavilion had witnessed, from the windows, what befell, and they at length reported thus and such, which Nariuji hearing doubted even as his anger flared, and he at once pressed forward into the pavilion, where he himself deigned to look out the windows. Indeed, the swift boat, that he had some days ago caused to be tethered outside that he might go fishing, was gone. All that remained on the post on the bank was the end of the painter where it had snapped.

This did not mean that the affair could be allowed to end in such a manner, and so Yokohori Arimura relayed his command that the water gate be opened and the four or five swift boats that were held in reserve be launched, carrying a contingent of men, among whom was Arimura himself. Rudders were aligned, sculls worked, and the boats flew out in pursuit, but too much time had passed, and before they had traversed five miles, their quarry had passed beyond sight, nor could their wake any longer be detected. The river flowed straight on, but even Arimura, with all his pride in his authority, thought it unwise to enter recklessly into another’s territory to capture someone there, and so, caught without a plan he could readily put into action, he transferred his rage onto his officers and men, cursing them, and turning the boats back.

He spoke to Nariuji, saying: “We could not overtake the little boat that Shino and Kenpachi fell into. However, they were fatigued from hours of bitter fighting when they fell, still grappling one another, from the ridge of that lofty roof; their flesh must have been torn and their bones crushed; they cannot have survived. Nevertheless it perturbs me not to have seen them to their end. Downstream, the river flows into the cove at Gyōtoko, in Katsushika. To the south lie Awa and Kazusa, and to the north lie Edo and Shiba Beach in Musashi, and Mito Cove, and the inlet at Chōshi—most of this land belongs to our allies, making it convenient for us to conduct our search. Let us again dispatch officers and men to canvass the area, by both land and sea: is that not the proper thing to do?”

Nariuji listened and nodded. “Your cunning accords with my own ideas, and yet it would not do to disturb the neighboring districts on account of a solitary villain; it would only invite scorn. If they did enter another territory, let us inquire furtively as to their destination, and if it so be that Shino has survived, then let us hatch a plan that he might be peacefully apprehended. Quickly now,” he urged. Arimura understood fully, and he busily withdrew.

Arimura selected Niiori Hodayū Atsumitsu, head of the fief’s warriors, as commander of the pursuit, and relayed to him his lord’s orders, saying, “You, milord, are well acquainted with the appearance of the villain Shino. You also know well his martial artistry and trickery. You know, therefore, that he is no easy quarry. Rather than attempting to conquer him by force, it will be better if you ensnare him with intelligence. Even if he did perish on that boat, claiming his head and bringing it back will be better than buying the bone of the fastest steed.⁷ You must make haste—if the sun sets on you, travel by night. Do not incur guilt by being tardy.”

Hodayū accepted these stern strictures with no objection. He girded himself for his sudden journey, and as the sun was inclining toward the west he led a troop of some thirty men out beneath Koga Castle, searching here and there along the banks of the Bandō River as it flowed toward Katsushika.

We turn our attention now to the district of Katsushika in the province of Shimōsa, where at the base of a bridge at the estuary in Gyōtoko there lived a man named Konaya Bungobei. He was the master of a hostelry long known in the country. His wife had passed away the year before last, and he had but two children. His first was named Kobungo.

Kobungo was twenty this year. He stood five feet, eleven inches tall; his flesh was firm, his bones were sturdy, and he had strength enough of thew to withstand a hundred men. His capacities were not at all those of a man of the marketplace—rather, he had a natural affinity for the martial arts, and ever since he was an unshorn youth he had eluded his parents’ eyes and forsaken his friends, even attaching himself to teachers, that he might polish his skills at the sword, hand-to-hand combat, and wrestling—there was nothing he did not study.

Bungobei’s second child was a girl of nineteen. She was called Nui. When she was twice eight, in the springtime, she had been given in marriage to a boat captain in the neighboring village of Ichikawa, a youth named Yamabayashi Fusahachirō, and by the end of that year she had already born him a son. They had named him Daihachi, and this year he was four.

Now, this Bungobei being dull to the arts of monetary increase, his house had never been a wealthy one, but they had sufficient; little they wanted for food or raiment, and whenever he had a modicum of leisure he went to the inlet and fished, in which activity he took uncommon pleasure.

The day was the twenty-first of the sixth month of the tenth year of Bunmei.⁸ It had been decided to relocate a shrine to the Ox-Headed Heavenly King⁹ to the beach nearby, and so when the sun went down on the landscape the villagers and fisherfolk were to come together to place the divine bier onto a boat, to scull it about near the beach and in the offing, to make music and dance, to thoroughly cast out the plague god, or to pray for the blessings of the sea, or to invoke the prosperity of the salt shore, according to the local usages; it was a day when sake was set out behind every door, a day of constant merrymaking.

But Bungobei was not much in that line, and, being an innkeeper and therefore particularly unoccupied during the daytime, and the festival not being until sundown, he judged it profitless to nap away the hours waiting, and so he thought rather to take a little enjoyment. He took up his fishing pole and set out for the inlet, where he broke some reeds and spread them out for a seat, baited his hook, and cast his line. It was nearly seven,¹⁰ and the tide was at its lowest ebb. Not the smallest goby did he catch, but this was something he enjoyed, and he did not leave.

A breeze blew through the cove, banishing thoughts of summer, rustling the reeds, tangling their shadows in the setting sun; sails raced across both sea and sky, and shore birds soared through landscapes of cloud. Sitting on a rock staring at the river / all things are without mind / Raising a rod and dropping a line / is not to be traded for the highest rank: thus did the ancient write, and it is still true. All waves follow from a single ripple; the smallest flash of scale betrays the presence of the greatest fish; his enjoyment had not yet begun to diminish when he spied a strange boat adrift, drawn on by the tide, rocked by the waves. It came floating down the stream, only to find its way weired by the channel buoys. Unbeckoned it came to rest on the nearby bank, and within it he could see two warriors, both fallen as if dead.

“Such a thing cannot be left here: ’twill bring trouble upon us hereabouts,” thought Bungobei, adjusting his grip on his fishing pole in order to push the boat back into the current. A closer look showed him that one of the fallen warriors wore a tea-brown hempen robe over hempen trousers dyed cerulean, the hems of which had been lifted to expose his shins; his topknot was disheveled, his teeth were clenched, and he bore two light wounds, one on his left elbow and one on his right thigh. The other fallen warrior wore a cuirass of fine-linked chain, bamboo-grass vambraces of plate, and greaves inlaid with tortoiseshell; all of this was cut open in numerous places, and this man, too, bore a slight wound—his was on his left shoulder. His pate, where it had once been shaven, was now covered with a long growth of hair, while the hair from his severed topknot lay in disorder over his face; nevertheless Bungobei could make out a mark on the man’s right cheek, a mark shaped like a peony.

“I have seen this before,” he thought. “Can it be he?” He could not ignore the weird sight, and so, while he struggled to quiet his heart leaping within his breast, he caught with his fishhook the boat’s painter where it dragged in the river water and pulled the boat toward him. After tethering it to a rock on the strand, he climbed into the boat, where he peered at each man in turn, reflecting as he looked that, “They seem to have ceased respiring, and yet, truly, their wounds are not deep enough to be fatal. If they were fighting another on the boat, who cut them both down? Or else were they fighting each other, until they both collapsed? Well, how can I know the cause of this without reviving them? Now, then.”

Thus thinking to himself, he raised the man with the mark on his cheek to a sitting position and set to work on him, calling to him in a loud voice, but the man did not revive. Bungobei, thwarted, finally decided to dash back home for some medicine, but as he stood to go he accidentally kicked, though lightly, the unarmored warrior in the side; this must have accorded with the principles of resuscitating the dead, for the man abruptly groaned, sat up, and looked around him, saying, “Now, what country is this? What cove? And what manner of man are you, milord?”

Bungobei, astonished to be thus queried, knelt on one knee and, watching the man’s face closely, said, “The one I meant to revive did not, but it seems that you, sir, whom I know not, yet lived. This is Gyōtoko, where the river enters the sea; it is in Katsushika, in Shimōsa. I am called Bungobei. I own the village hostel. I was fishing on this reed bed when your boat came floating by. The man with the mark on his cheek there I know for Kenpachi Nobumichi, only son of master Inukai Kenbei, errand runner for the resident of Koga Palace: I could not let him lie, and so I brought the boat over and did for him whatever I could, when to my surprise you, sir, awoke first. Are you a comrade of his in the same fief? There must be some reason you collapsed in this boat and floated here. Pray, tell me of the circumstances.”

The other sighed again and again at these questions. “A warrior will not wish to lie or embroider, even temporarily and for fear of future hardship. And so I shall tell you the truth. I am Inuzuka Shino Moritaka, a country warrior with some connection to the village of Ōtsuka, near Edo in Musashi. My grandfather Shōsaku Mitsumori served the lords Shun’ō and An’ō, who were elder brothers to the Minister of the Court Nariuji; he died in battle at Yūki. My father Inuzuka Bansaku was wounded there so grievously that he could never walk properly again; a cripple, he retired to our ancestral territory, the village of Ōtsuka, where he passed away in the second year of Bunmei at the age of forty-five. I was eleven at the time, and I spent several years in the house of which my blackhearted aunt and her husband were masters.

“Then I went to Koga. This was because of my father’s dying words to me. A precious sword, Rainmaker, a memento of the two Princes, has been passed down in my family for three generations, from my grandfather Shōsaku to me. My father aspired for me to present it to the Koga lord, should the time come, and my only thought for years, as I kept the sword protected at my waist, never letting it leave my side, was for how to carry out his wish; when at long last I found my chance, I took it to far Koga. But how could I have suspected that the precious sword had been replaced by another? I only found out on the day I was to present it, and I was given no leave to plead my ignorance, but was suspected of being an enemy sent to infiltrate their camp—it was my misfortune that the truth or falsity of my claim was left unexamined, while Yokohori Fuhito, suspicious as a fox, ordered the dozens of mighty men who were on the scene to take me alive, and they obeyed, rising to their feet in a mass. Had I quailed and allowed my wrists to be bound and fetters to be placed around me, had I gone meekly off to prison and died for a crime with no basis in fact, it would have been a shame not upon myself alone, but upon my fathers, whose name should have been destroyed: so thought I, and thus I was forced into a bloody struggle to escape my peril.

“I rushed out into the courtyard and clambered from eave to eave until I had mounted to the ridge of the loftiest rooftop, where I paused to catch my breath; then I saw this Inukai Kenpachi, if that be his name (although I never heard it until from Your Lordship just now), climbing alone in pursuit of me. We sparred until much time had passed, and finally, my longsword breaking, we grappled and wrestled, until we missed our footing together and, still clinched in each other’s arms, it seemed to me we fell into a boat moored on the bank of the river that ran outside the castle walls. I know nothing of what came after. It seems to me now that if both he and I passed out and drifted here, then the painter must have snapped when we fell, and the tide must have carried us where it would.

“Nor is that the only mystery. I paid it little mind at first, when we were fighting, but now I see the mark on Kenpachi’s face resembles a peony, and something occurs to me—can it be? In my home village of Ōtsuka there was a destitute farmer called Nukasuke. He lived near us when my father was alive, and so we were by no means on bad terms. Then after my father died he showed an increase of pity toward me in my orphaned state, a most uncommon degree of openhearted loyalty, and for my part I, too, kept company with him in all sincerity. Now, this Nukasuke sloughed off this mortal coil one day last year in the seventh month, from an illness then epidemic in the region. I gave him the means to buy medicine and food from time to time, and helped him through the ailments of age and the discomforts of poverty, and so perhaps he felt duty-bound by gratitude or righteousness, for on his deathbed he told me something. What he said was thus-and-such.”

Shino proceeded to relate how Nukasuke, when he was banished from Awa, had stood on the bridge at Gyōtoko’s estuary cradling his infant in his arms, planning to throw himself into the water, and how at that moment he had been stopped by a courier from a military house who had convinced him, begged him, to give his only child, but two years of age, to the man. “At that time the runner told Nukasuke only that he was one of Nariuji’s men, Minister of the Court; Nukasuke did not ask the man’s surname, nor did he give his own name. Thus they parted, said Nukasuke, and it seemed as if there was no way he should ever see his child again, but he told me he had named the child Genkichi, and that Genkichi had been born with a mark on his right cheek in the shape of a peony. Now I see this Inukai Kenpachi has a mark on his face in that shape: ’tis like the two halves of a tally.

“Nor is that all. I am told that the courier who adopted Nukasuke’s son said to him that, ‘I am on my way back from a mission for my lord to the Satomi in Awa, and cannot bring an infant with me. My usual inn is nearby. I shall speak to the master of the house and leave the child there for a time, and then come back to collect him.’ Now you, milord, say that you are an innkeeper hereabouts, and that you are of long acquaintance with this Kenpachi. You would seem to be the one of whom I was told. There are more proofs, although none but the man himself may know them.

“My grandfather was an old retainer of the Minister of the Court Mochiuji, in Kamakura. Nukasuke well knew this, and so his last request of me was that I might, if I ever presented myself to His Lordship at Koga, inquire as to whether Nukasuke’s boy was still in his household; I was moved by his sense of duty, love, and righteousness—I could not slough this off as a matter impertinent to myself. And so now, going to Koga, I thought only of accomplishing the final requests of my father and my friend, and yet the sword I bore became my enemy, as holding a gem beyond one’s means may invite blame, if not guilt.

“But what shall I do about this grief? I fought him, never thinking to ask if he was the one I sought—and I alone survived—he is dead. All this serves to teach me of my fate, which seems to be to act disloyally toward my father and to break my promise to a friend. That is how it is with me! Take me to the court of inquest, if you would. Let the law of the land do with me as it will.”

Bungobei sighed to see a courageous warrior, unbending in frame and spirit, speak words of such frank resignation; he slapped his knee suddenly and said, “Ah, but you are a man of filial piety and righteousness. You must not be taken to a court of inquest—the law of the land must not do anything with you. The story you have just now told me matches what I know like a lower lip matches an upper. I have never, not even in a dream, heard this name Nukasuke you mention, but Master Inukai Kenbei, an errand runner for the Incumbent at Koga, stopped at my inn, coming and going, whenever he was sent on a mission to Lord Satomi. Thinking about it now, it must have been seventeen or eighteen—no, it was nineteen years ago. Indeed, Master Kenbei, crossing that bridge yonder—see there—met a starving, tired traveler cradling a baby, who meant to throw himself into the water, and Master Kenbei stopped him, forbade him, gave the father a little silver for the road and redeemed the child from him; he then returned to my hostel and left the child in my care. It was the year after the birth of my firstborn, Kobungo, and so my wife had no shortage of milk, which she shared with the infant, and a lot of good it did him, for he fattened nicely. A month and more passed, and Master Kenbei came back to retrieve the lad. Thenceforth he was more solicitous than ever; we exchanged written greetings on the first of the year, each eager to receive news of the other and each making inquiries after the welfare of the other’s child. Many years passed after this fashion, until in the autumn of the year before last Master Kenbei was given a commission to Lord Satomi, returning from which he and his son both stopped at my inn.

“At that time he spoke to me, saying, ‘I have grown old, and cannot fulfill my duties very much longer. Therefore I begged Lord Yokohori’s permission for my son Kenpachi to accompany me as an escort, that he might watch and learn, and thus have I brought him with me. In truth, though, I brought him to show your lordship and your wife that he has become a man. Ever since he was an unshorn youth he has had an uncommon love for the martial arts, receiving instruction from Master Nikaimatsu Yamashironosuke from quite an early age, even coming to be known as his chief disciple, outstripping the others in spite of the feebleness of his youth. In particular he is said to be mighty without equal in the fief in hand-to-hand combat and the arts of capturing a man. Perhaps it is an inflated reputation, but I think he might have earned it a little. I owe you a debt of gratitude for raising him, sharing with him the mistress’s milk, when I adopted him. It makes him what is commonly known as a milk-brother to your son Kobungo, who must be the same age as my boy. Furthermore Kobungo shares Kenpachi’s love for the martial arts, and, I surmise, equals him for muscularity of frame and strength of thew. They resemble each other in their likes, your son and mine. The one has no elder brother, the other no younger. If Kobungo and Kenpachi were to bind themselves as brothers so as never to forget how they began, then might they each have something to rely on in the future, as well. What think you, milord?’

“Unable to think of a single argument against it, I told my wife and my son, and ultimately let Master Kenbei do as he wished. We convened a modest banquet at which cups were ceremonially proffered. Kenpachirō’s amulet pouch contained a note properly certifying that he had been born at the end of the tenth month of Chōroku 3. My boy Kobungo was born in the eleventh month of that year—a month later—and so the issue of seniority was clarified.

“The following morning father and son Inukai returned to Koga, and none of us stinted on sorrow at the parting. Before very long my wife succumbed to her old complaint, and, tragically, departed this world. Tidings born on the wind told me that Master Kenbei, after an illness of some ten days’ duration, went to his sojourn in the Yellow Springs in the summer of last year.

“Thus it is that this man who lies here dead is an elder brother to my son Kobungo. Though he is my son, I may tell you that Kobungo has a brawny masculinity of spirit that has led him to embrace good and spread righteousness until he has been set up as leader of the village’s youth. What will he say when he hears of this? And yet, considering how the affair began, I know you did not kill him out of malice. Nor did this one attempt to capture you out of any hatred toward you. He fought because his lord commanded him to. Your only thought, when you cut your way past the barriers that hemmed you in, was to escape your own hard straits.

“And if I might speak of personal feelings, you have a duty, a debt of gratitude, toward the deceased’s real father, this Nukasuke you mention, while the deceased, had he known he could learn from you details about his real father, would never have stood for the job of man-catcher, even though it meant refusing his lord’s command. Had you and the deceased named yourselves to each other in the first place, how indeed could you have engaged each other in combat, much less tumbled together from a high tower? Yea, it was because you did not know each other that you fought: is it then a karmic reward from past lives that things should have come to this pass? It was fate that Lord Kenpachi, the one I first sought to revive, lives not, while you alone came back to life, and so whom now are we to hate?

“Happy it is that no one knows of this. Flee by land and hide yourself; escape your curse another day, I pray you. I will not commit this corpse to the hands of another; I shall tell my son Kobungo of what has happened, and one way or another we shall lay him to rest. Go quickly, I pray you.”

Shino heard the man’s urgings, but shook his head. “It may seem that I am rejecting your friendship, milord, and the clear principles of righteousness in your interpretation of events, but I was careless enough to let someone pluck the precious Rainmaker from me and replace it with another blade, and with no proof to convince anyone of it, I brewed up a singular calamity for myself. It would be more shameful for me to flee to my aunt and uncle in Ōtsuka than it would be for me to have quailed and been captured at the Koga palace. To cleave unto benevolence and through righteousness to know well what shame is: this is what it means to be human.

“Then, too, Your Lordship’s tale tells me that this Inukai Kenpachi is Nukasuke’s son: this I now know, though we named ourselves not to one another. I was helpless when I knew not, but now that I do know, for me to live on alone, having shirked Nukasuke’s charge after once undertaking it, would be unrighteousness. Though a century’s longevity be mine, what use would it be to stand in the world and be called an unrighteous servant? Infinitely bitter would it be for me, having by chance been born male, to die a dog’s death at the age of nineteen, my aspirations unfulfilled, having acted neither meritoriously nor virtuously in the eyes of my fellow man, my country, but what is to be done if such is my luckless fate? I have never had relations on which I could rely, only a menial in the service of the Ōtsuka Estatesman, a man named Gakuzō: with him I have formed a righteous, secret pact these last few years. But he is a brother of different lineage. His real name, he says, is Inukawa Sōsuke Yoshitō. If you have any mercy more, send him word in confidence, let him know that this is what became of me. I left my sidearm sword at Koga. The blade I bore broke. At least if I borrow Kenpachi’s blade to kill myself with, it will allow me to display my sincerity, that I would no longer deceive the dead. Now, then,” he said, stretching out his right hand to draw the blade at Kenpachi’s waist.

Bungobei held him back. “There is reason in the things you say, but seldom does one find a person so singularly devoted to righteousness, so set in the Way. Can I kill such a precious youth, though he say he would die? Unhand that sword.”

“No, no—what you say would seem to be compassion, but is none at all. Had Kenpachi returned to life with me, I should not belabor Your Lordship. Whether we contested the victory again or whether we fenced ourselves about with a friendship like no other would have been decided according to what seemed appropriate in the moment, but with things as they stand, there is nothing to be done. I am a man, too. Though you would stop me, shall I let myself be stopped? Withdraw there, I pray you,” said Shino, shaking the other off. Then, renewing his grip on the flashing blade, he set it to his stomach.

Just then Kenpachi, whom they had thought dead, sat suddenly bolt upright and cried, “Hail, Mister Inuzuka—wait! Do not be hasty.” And he restrained Shino, clutching the arm he favored.

“What is this?” said Shino, turning about.

Bungobei was even more astounded—dumbfounded—his eyes grew round, he placed his hands on his hips, and he found himself gasping, his breath more ragged than the wind from the cove.

1. Perhaps a variation on a comment in Chapter 113 of Shiji. Variants in Japanese occur as early as the twelfth-century Heiji monogatari.

2. From chapter 18 of the second-century BCE collection Huainanzi (J. Enanji). The old man of Sai’s horse escapes to a neighboring country. This misfortune turns to good fortune when the horse returns in the company of a prize steed; but this luck turns ill when the man’s son, riding the new steed, falls and breaks his leg. This injury, however, keeps the son from going to war—a stroke of good fortune.

3. From Section 58 of Laozi (J. Rōshi).

4. The philosopher Mozi made a wooden bird (called a “kite,” i.e., Milvus migrans); the inventor Lu Ban made a siege engine known as the “cloud-ladder.”

5. Hatebe (also known as Hasuhi) was sent to the Korean peninsula during the reign of Emperor Kinmei; while there he killed a tiger with his bare hands. See the Nihon shoki chapter on Kinmei’s reign.

6. Tomita (or Tomida) Chikaie (also known as Saburō) was an early Kamakura-era warrior famed for his strength. According to legend, he proved his strength to the shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo by breaking a stag’s antlers by hand.

7. This seems to be a variation on the saying shiba no hone o kau, “to buy a dead horse’s bone,” an expression meaning to venerate something worthless in hopes of attracting those who are worthier.

8. 1478.

9. A figure worshiped at the Gion Shrine in Kyoto and elsewhere, and held to be the avatar both of Bhaisajyaguru, the Medicine Buddha (J. Yakushi), and the Shintō god Susanoo.

10. Late afternoon.