Chapter XXVIII

Cursing her enemy, Hamaji dies with her chastity;

Recognizing his kin, Tadatomo speaks of the past

Hamaji could not dam up her tears, and to herself she thought that “hearing now of my adopted parents’ viciousness—alas, that such a thing should be!—and of Aboshi’s cunning turns hatred to despair at th’karmic mutability of life: and when I consider my husband’s sufferings in travel robes he donned today—or was it yesterday?—to leave me, only for a little while—oh, break, jewel’d cord of life, if thou would’st break! I must recover this precious sword for him—but how? I must, if only in dream, inform him of these things, give him the sword!”

These thoughts gave her cheer and courage, and at last she brought her weeping into submission and said, “I knew only hatred for you, for acting so unreasonably in binding me, for subjecting me to the shame of being led off in flight: but to find myself loved so by one from whom I did not expect it tells me that we must share an inescapable vow from a past life, and that this has brought us together as companions now. Much have I seen and heard concerning Master Inuzuka and his sword. So circumspect is he that I should not have thought him capable of being tricked, even in the most exigent of circumstances. And yet you say you quite easily switched swords on him. If you speak truly, then I am between a rock and a hard place. Even my parents will think me capable of running away with you, based on the knowledge that you stole the sword, despite my bearing no love for you in the beginning. I cannot go home again, and even less may I expect to be accepted by Master Inuzuka, so proper by nature. But first, pray, show me the blade.”

He nodded energetically at this. “Now you are being reasonable! Shino is not, in his heart, careless, but when he jumped into the water to save his aunt’s husband, ’twas me he left alone in the boat. And as I switched only the blades, he never knew. Truly, Rainmaker here shall be not only the bridge to my advancement, but the God of Binding, to confirm my vows to my lover—my old man in the moonlight.¹ As evidence of my truthfulness, you shall see, when I draw it, how moisture immediately appears from the sword—this is the miracle of it. Behold, and cast aside your doubts.”

As he delivered this final exhortation, he drew the sword and handed it to her. She took it with her right hand, turned it over as if to examine it, and then, with a cry of “For my husband!” she thrust—the blade flashed—in its light he flinched in astonishment—but her strike was wide to the left, and he leaned right to evade it—she swung the blade low, and he jumped over it—she struck from above, and he ducked—he stepped back, and she pressed forward, a valiant woman whose feeble arms were strengthened by her will, and whose sword point could not be dismissed—Samojirō grew enraged, and he unsheathed his short sword—with it he fended off her blows, and then he advanced, and slashed Hamaji below her breast.

As the wounded girl gave a spirit-rending cry, her sword arm slackened—Samojirō kicked the blade away, and with a nimble twist advanced—he grabbed a handful of her hair and forced her to the ground below his knee—he glared at her a while, and then raised his voice: “You bitch!² Have you come to your senses yet? ’Twas my passion for you that kept my heart tranquil, and let me speak to you words of comfort and persuasion; you respond with obsession, self-indulgence, and knife play. You call me your enemy, when I am not. But if you find it so hard to forget Shino, then I will give you leave: go meet him in the next world! I was determined that my backbreaking labors should not be in vain: I thought that if you would not bend to my will I might at least sell you as a plaything and keep your worth in money. Now I have been forced to damage the merchandise, and I cannot do that. But this is what you get for making things so painful for me: I shall not kill you right away. I shall make you suffer to my heart’s content—I shall toy with you until you die to ease my boredom on this journey, and to comfort me until the fever inside me cools. You are not long for this world. Cry if you would cry, or if you would speak, say whatever you like: I will listen, until the moon comes out.”

He dragged her to her feet, and then dashed her to the ground some distance away; he picked up the longsword Rainmaker and replaced it in his scabbard. He tied this to his waist, then stuck his short sword into the ground so that it stood upright. He sat himself on a nearby tree stump, removed a folded paper from his bosom, fished around inside it until he found the tweezers it contained, and then, after rubbing his jaw for a time, set about plucking his sparse whiskers.

Hamaji, meanwhile, had been wounded in a vital spot—the jeweled thread of her life was about to snap, but one end was still tied to her husband, and this tugged at her until at last she could pull herself to her feet—she brushed away the hair that hung disheveled in her face and spoke. “Oh, how I hate you, Samojirō! You knew I had a husband, and yet you forced me away with you—and not only that, but now I learn how sanguinely you heard my step-parents’ scheme, accepted it, purloined the precious sword and sent my mate down into Death’s country. Ah, the wicked cunning and perversion that is yours! I wove a scheme, that I might join my hate to the sword, but then I failed to do my will: a harsh blade struck this locust husk, and I must lose my life—oh, will the moon and sun not shine on me again? It must be evil karma from a previous life.

“And yet what gives me most concern is this: what will become of my mate? All hope of reuniting dies with me. Surely someone will tell him what became of me. Ah, this useless, lusterless world! And how fleeting am I within it! In infancy our parents gave us to each other as man and mate, but only in name—we never slept together. A real family have I, parents and sibling, among the retainers of the Lord of Nerima—or so the rumors say, but I know not their names, and never knew their faces these many years, though ever did I love them, and then, lo! last year the house of Nerima fell, and rumor said that everyone was killed, senior and junior vassals alike. The tale of my woes ever does increase—this triple sash of Mie silk that now shows how thin and wasted I have become cannot encompass them—and I shall be extinguished with the wildfire upon this hill of Marutsuka and never meet again the ones I love. My journey to that darkling land will be a solitary one, and that I end this way is due in part to my parents’ errant and unrighteous acts, but also to your evil, which aided them! Think you that you can escape my hate, that it will not be visited upon you as ultimate reward, when I could not in nine lifetimes let it dissipate? Resentment and misfortune both proceed from the self-same fate and nothing else. I have no feeling anymore for my step-parents, who concern themselves little with my laments: but I love Master Inuzuka. Oh, how I wish my spirit could transform into a water bird like those that dwell in th’meadow-fens that skirt this mountainside—then might I fly to Koga in a flash and warn my husband of what has come to pass! I place no value on my life, and yet love and gratitude and probity cause me to value it, to cling to life in hopes that I might see the day when I am reunited with my husband, or can learn if my true parents live or die. The night deepens—oh, will no one come to cross this hill, and to find me here? Is there no god to save me in this world?” How frail is a girl’s heart: she wept, and bitterly, and hardly could she form the dewdrop words that overspilled her heart.

Samojirō yawned and stretched, and wiped away the whiskers stuck to his tweezers. “A lengthy complaint, that! To hear you tell it, you are a filial girl for your parents’ sakes, and a chaste one for Shino’s sake—but what is there for me in all of that? If you only value your life for your husband’s sake, as you say, then it is too late for you to be saved. Truly, killing you profits no one, but this is all your heart’s doing. How fragile you look, and yet how strongly rooted are you in this life—I admire anyone who can talk so much with such a grievous wound, in such a vital place. I shall reward you: I shall give you leave to depart this world instantly. Now, then,” he said.

Hurriedly he replaced the tweezers in his bosom and plucked his short sword out of the ground where it stood. He flashed it at her and adjusted his grip. “I was going to do it with this blade, since it is already bloody, but—wait a moment. Perhaps I should show you the way with Rainmaker, as it fascinates you so. How happy you must be!” he scoffed, while wiping down the short sword, sheathing it, and replacing it at his waist. Again he brandished the sword Rainmaker. “Say your prayers,” he said, advancing.

Hamaji was unperturbed. She raised her head and said, “Though I fall at the hands of an enemy, I desire nothing more than to die by my husband’s blade. Kill me quickly, Samojirō. Your end, too, will come soon, and it will be like mine!”

He did not let her finish—his eyes shone with anger—“The random mutterings of a hateful woman—I shall stop your mouth!” He pulled her close—the blade glinted as he went to thrust it through her chest—but before he could, some unknown but practiced hand in the vicinity of the crematory pit darted a throwing spike, unerringly, at a point just below Samojirō’s left breast. It dug in so deeply as to poke out his back. Not for a moment could he endure such a wound in such a vital place: he flung down the longsword and reeled backward with a great cry.

Then came another strange occurrence: Suddenly something appeared at the edge of the pit. It was none other than Kenryū, the Jakumaku Adept, he who had displayed his own death by self-immolation. His appearance was changed now from what it had been originally, and how shall we describe it? Behold: covering his belly completely, tight against his skin, he wore a shirt of chain after the style of the Southern Barbarians, they who shriek like shrikes, so that he looked like a spider ensconced in its web. Over that he wore a broad-sleeved singlet of Chinese crossweave with the hem hiked up, so that it looked like autumn leaves in a waterfall. A longsword in a scarlet scabbard hung sideways at his waist; his feet were shod in thick sandals of sheep-straw; he wore tightly worked bamboo-grass vambraces of broad plate metal³ and greaves that resembled the hats worn by the judges of Hell, and a sash of deep violet tied in a circular knot high in the rear. He looked to be yet young—perhaps no more than twenty. Lofty was his brow and cool his gaze, fair his complexion with red lips; his ears were thick, his teeth fine; raven-dark was the hair that grew long around his once-shaven forehead, while his beard was so black it looked blue. Was his heart good or evil—were his acts just or wicked? This could not yet be told: but the spirit that shone through his striking countenance proclaimed him no ordinary man.

Now as Jakumaku Kenryū stepped slowly forward, looking left and right, Samojirō regained his breath, and seeing that his enemy approached, he pulled out the throwing spike that had punctured him and tossed it aside; hauled himself to his feet, leaning on his sword as if it were a crutch; then staggered forward, meaning to strike. Kenryū merely watched him, not in the least bothered; he parried Samojirō’s blows for a while, deflecting them this way and that, then harried him, abruptly entering within his guard and in an instant wresting the sword from his grip; then, spinning, Kenryū struck Samojirō a mighty blow, cutting him. The might of his opponent’s fist sent Samojirō into a somersault, and he fell.

Kenryū spared him not a glance, but lifted the sword, from which a thick mist of water rose, and examined the blade unblinkingly from tip to hilt. “Forsooth, this is Rainmaker, that precious blade of which I have heard. Draw it and jewel-like drops fall, like dew or rain. A prodigy, a wonder! The line on the tempered blade that divides the edge from the body—’tis like a rainbow arcing across the sky, or a limpid stream flowing across the land. It is a thing as rare as Feng Fortress’s three feet of ice, or Wu Palace’s box of frost⁴: divine dragons sing in the clouds, demons cry in the night, for the likes of this. Now it has come unbidden into my hands, this famous blade: can it mean the time has come to realize my long-held desire for revenge? A prodigy, a prodigy,” he said, shifting the sword to his left hand, and then back to his right, never tiring of gazing upon it, no thought in his head save admiration for it.

We leave him to rejoin Gakuzō, who upon parting from Shino that morning had sought to hurry home, only to find his heart tugging him back, so that he did not make the progress he would have liked; to add to which, the summer was at its hottest, so that he was forced hither and yon in search of shade, now resting, now running; by the time he crossed the Senju River the sun had set, and the road was quite dark. It was not enough to make him lose his way, however, and somehow he made it to a point this side of the village of Komagomi. Here, however, he realized that the road he was on was not the one most advantageous for his return. “I had thought to cut across Hongō Hill and go back by Koishikawa, but it would be better to take a more roundabout route—I should wait for the moon to rise—then it would be easier to make fake wounds upon my body, too,” he thought to himself.

And so it was that, as the first hour of the night expired, he was passing Marutsuka Hill, where he had heard there was to be a self-immolation. The crematory fire had not yet gone out, and as he approached it, its light showed him a man and a woman lying on the ground, covered with blood. A lone villain stood there, too, a naked blade in his hand. “A fine thing,” thought Gakuzō, stopping in his tracks; he hid himself in the shadow of a pine, in order to observe the situation.

As he did so, Kenryū picked up Rainmaker’s scabbard and sheathed the blade in it, then knelt beside the helpless, prostrate Hamaji. He sat her up with a heave, and then hastily took some medicine from his bosom and poured it into her mouth.

“Young maiden, young maiden!” He tried to revive her, and whether it was his voice or whether it was the medicine, it worked. She looked with astonishment upon this strange man ministering to her, and she single-mindedly tried to shake him off—she writhed—but Kenryū would not loose his grasp, and spoke unto her, saying, “Well might you be startled—well might you dread—well might you wonder if I am your foe or friend, as I have not told you my names, nor what I am to you. Your wound is deep, but it is not in a vital spot. Calm your heart, listen to what I am now about to say, and realize your hopes even at this extremity.”

She exhaled through pursed lips, staring into his face, and replied, “Who are you to say such things to me?”

He returned her gaze, sighed, and said, “It is not without compunction that I give my name, but we are on a hill overgrown with trees, at night, and no one else is around. In me you have found—encountered by chance—he who is to you an elder brother by a different mother: I am called Inuyama Michimatsu Tadatomo. Last autumn, for certain reasons of my own, I altered my appearance and assumed a new name. Since then I have been known in the world, though falsely, as the practitioner of austerities Kenryū, of the Jakumaku Cloister. Everywhere I go I put on a display of self-immolation in order to coax coins from ignorant folk; these funds shall be put to martial use, when I avenge my lord and father.

“For my lord Nerima Heizaemonnojō, the Minister of the Court Masumori, was cut down at Ikebukuro with the rest of the Toshima and Hiratsuka clans, and my father Inuyama Sadatomo, His Eminence Dōsaku the Initiate, along with every other senior vassal, escorted him to that darkling land: the Nerima manor was attacked with fire, and none survived. Nor did I begrudge him my life, but I could find no enemy worth engaging at whose hands I might die, and so, mysterious though it is to me, I hacked my way out of the battlefield, and at length settled upon a grand and good enterprise of revenge.

“Secret techniques of stealth and infiltration have been passed down in our house, and having disguised myself as an ascetic I employed the second of the Five Spells of Concealment, the Fire Escape. I would walk through blazes to gain the trust of ignorant folk, and then I would make a great show of my intentions to immolate myself, inviting contributions of cash, and thus accumulate treasure, all to fulfill my martial purpose. I would make it appear as if I were throwing myself into the fire, but not do so; I would let them think my body had been consumed by the flames, while I was hiding outside the fire.

“This is what is known as the Fire Escape. In all, there are five Spells of Concealment.⁵ The first is the Wood Escape: when one is near a tree one may conceal one’s form, effectively disappearing. The second is the Fire Escape: when one encounters a fire one may conceal one’s form, so that one remains undetected by others. The third is the Earth Escape: this means that when one’s feet are in contact with the ground one will not be visible to others. Entering walls, hiding in holes—these are examples of the Earth Escape. The fourth is the Metal Escape: this is concealing one’s form with gold, silver, bronze, or iron. The fifth is the Water Escape: this allows one to stay in water for a long time without pain or discomfort, or even to conceal one’s form with a single ladleful of water. These are the five Spells of Concealment: they were originally skills pertaining to the Way of Zhang Daoling.⁶ It is said they have been widely practiced in China from the end of the Han all the way up to the current dynasty of Ming.

“In our own realm, in the Nin’an era of the Emperor of the Rokujō Cloister,⁷ there was a Chinese monk at the Shuzen Temple in Izu. He alone attained the technique of the Wood Escape; later, in secret, he passed it on to the Ministry of Guards Adjutant Yoritomo. It is said that when he lost in battle at Mount Ishibashi, Yoritomo hid in the hollow of a fallen tree, and thus eluded danger.⁸ In truth, he must have effected a Wood Escape. Yoshioka Kiichi, the Dharma Eye, attained the technique of the Fire Escape; however, he did not entrust it to anybody. Ushiwakamaru of the Minamoto stole a look at his secret records and himself attained the technique of the Fire Escape.⁹ In the Bunji era,¹⁰ when the fortress of Takatachi fell, Yoshitsune, exhausted from the fighting, set fire to the fortress and burned it himself, while he escaped outside its walls. This was because he used the Fire Escape technique. And yet we hear no reports that he passed this technique on to anyone.

“My house alone had a record of this technique, handed down to us from our ancestors, but as it was written in odd characters and obscure phrases, none there were who could understand it. When I was fifteen I first examined it, and glimpsed a bit of its light; from that day forth I read aloud from it day and night, applying myself to its mysteries for three years, until at last I had grasped its innermost portent. This method, however, is sinister, akin to sorcery, and it is not something in which a brave warrior should engage; I never told my father, never passed it on to anyone, and never even attempted it myself, until I found myself alone and unaided in my desire to avenge my lord and sire and cut down the Overseer Ōgigayatsu Sadamasa and his accomplices. There is nothing like money to bind men’s hearts, I reflected, and so then I used this otiose technique of the Fire Escape—I represented it falsely as austerities by fire, or self-immolation. I deceived ignorant folk, and whenever and wherever I happened to capture a little money thereby, I quickly left that place.

“This year I made my way from Shimotsuke and Shimōsa to Toshima, here in Musashi, where again I conducted the self-immolation hoax, gathering thereby some few coins, but upon further consideration it seemed to me that what I desired would seem to be loyalty and filial piety but was in reality nothing but thievery. Yea, though I obtained the aid of many in toppling my great foe, if I also did such bad things as this—deceiving people to take their money—then I should yet leave behind a blot on my name. It vexed me then that I had wasted my aspirations on such dishonest pursuits—I reproached myself endlessly for being such a braying ass, until, unable to bear it any longer, I retreated to my hiding place—I tore off my counterfeit beard and threw it aside, resumed my original appearance, and made up my mind to fix my aim on Sadamasa even if I must fight him alone.

“And when I once again came to cross Marutsuka Hill I saw yon travelers’ brawl—I could not ignore it, so I hid and watched to see who would prove the manlier, and I saw the trio of rogues struck down. Only one villain remained, and he seemed to have abducted an alluring girl: when she would not submit to his unreasonable advances, his sensual passions and desires, he gave way to rage, finally going so far as to lay a hand on the girl. This was how I first learned—overhearing his rants and her laments—that the girl was the adopted daughter of Hikiroku, the headman of the village of Ōtsuka.

“Hamaji is your name now, is it not? You are my younger sister, by a different mother. You were called Mutsuki as a baby. It would have been when you were two, and I was six, that my father informed me you had been sent to become the adopted daughter of someone named Hikiroku, or something like that, head of the village of Ōtsuka in the district of Toshima, with the promise that we would have no further contact with you as long as we lived. Once I realized that you were she I could not bear to see your distress—I threw my spike and killed the enemy of my sister.

“From what I heard, it seems you have been betrothed to a man since you were very small. Judging by how true you remained to him in such tortuous circumstances, how you counted your own life worth nothing as you cursed your enemy, and how you yearned for your true parents and brother, I think your heart must be finely tempered indeed, chaste and dutiful. And yet you failed to accomplish your aim, while I, though not far away, was too late to save you—that things have come to this pass bespeaks a lapse in Heaven’s oversight of what passes on earth, a failure to discriminate between good and evil—but perhaps it is the workings of samsara, an effect of ineluctable karma. Now endure your suffering, though my speech be long, and let your confusion be dispelled, I pray.

“Your mother was called Ayame, and she was a concubine of our father. My mother’s name was Ozehi. She, too, was one of my father’s mistresses, but was made his main wife by virtue of having born him a son. The first wife to share the inner chamber with my father His Eminence Dōsaku died young, and rather than marry a successor he kept a mistress to produce progeny for him. But after a year or two had passed in this way and she had not become pregnant, he procured another concubine. The first mistress was Ayame, and the one who came later was Ozehi. At this time my father spoke to his two concubines in jest, saying, ‘The first of you, no matter which it be, to bear me a son, I shall make my official wife.’ Thus he promised, and Ozehi became with child, and bore a son on the earth-dog day of the ninth month of Chōroku 3.¹¹ The child she bore was me. I was born with a large lump on my left shoulder. It was shaped like a pine knob, and so I was called Michimatsu.¹² In the spring of my fifteenth year, when I left behind child’s dress for man’s, I was named Tadatomo. You can guess at my father’s joy.

“This being the case, Ayame became jealous and resentful, thinking that my father would keep his promise to elevate my mother to the position of official wife; but she kept her mood from showing, and in the spring of Kanshō 3,¹³ she bore a girl. She came to term in the early spring, and so she named the girl Mutsuki.¹⁴ This Mutsuki was you, my sister.

“Now Ayame, seeing that Ozehi, who had come after her, had born a son before her, while she had only born a girl, and that later, felt herself more superfluous than an iris on the sixth or a chrysanthemum on the tenth. This must have been unbearable to her, for in the late spring of Kanshō 4, when my father was sent by his lord, Lord Nerima, to Kyoto as a messenger to the shogunal house, Ayame plotted in secret with a physician named Imasaka Jōan to poison my mother and strangle me, burying us both in the family temple, and then lied, saying that mother and child had fallen sudden prey to a contagion of the season.

“At the end of the month my father’s duties in Kyoto were concluded and he started for home, and in every lodging along the way he had many horrid dreams. With every succeeding day the pounding in his chest grew louder, and his heart grew more and more uneasy, until finally he pressed on day and night to return to Nerima. When he arrived he learned of the sudden expiration of his wife and child. Their funeral had already taken place, some twenty days ago plus one or two.

“He was shocked, grieved, stricken—the next day he visited the temple and offered incense and flowers at their graves. There he heard the wailing of a child from underneath the tomb. This astonished him even more, and he told the incumbent of this suspicious occurrence; he summoned men and had them open the grave, and there I was: I had come back to life, and was bawling lustily. When they finally rescued me they examined me to find nothing out of the ordinary, except that a blackish mark, in the shape of a peony, had appeared on the lump on my shoulder.

“But alas for my mother! Her body had already begun to putrefy, and there was nothing to be done for her: she was reinterred, and my father took me home. He first made all this known to his lord and master, and then peremptorily summoned the servants and told them of what had happened. I was six that year. When the servants had been gathered, I turned to my father and said that thus-and-such a thing had taken place, and that ‘my mother had tragically left this world, and I had been buried with her, and the enemy who had done all this was Ayame. The villain who aided her was Jōan.’

“My father was once again astonished and outraged: he bound Ayame then and there, and personally interrogated her. For a while she equivocated, but then something possessed her to speak—my charges against her were clear, though I was a child, and there was no escape for her—Ayame submitted to her guilt. Therefore my father once again reported to his lord and master, and his appeal was heard by certain people. Jōan was taken into custody and questioned with much severity. His confession agreed with Ayame’s in every particular, and so they were both alike executed for their crimes, and their heads displayed like owls on perches, as the law would have it.

“This, however, did not mollify Father’s anger. ‘Though Mutsuki is but a girl of two, her mother was guilty of the most heinous depravity. I can no longer have her as my daughter. I shall give her to a proper candidate, with the understanding that I shall have no further contact with her as long as I live.’ When seeking such a person, he let it be known, out of concern for what others would say, that she was his ‘two-year-old at forty-two,’ such as the whole world avoids; he adopted you out, I understood, to someone by the name of Hikiroku, or something like it, head of the village of Ōtsuka, and also gave him seven strings of Yongle coins to pay for your upbringing.

“My father first told me this in the spring of my twelfth year, on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of my mother’s death. Truly, I remembered nothing of having told, when I was but six, of Ayame’s wickedness, and so this was the first I knew in any detail of my mother’s violent death, and of you. I shed uncontainable tears of yearning for the past as I pictured you, Mutsuki, child of the same father as me, but also of a mother who was the bitterest enemy of mine. I wondered if I might ever again see this younger sister, abandoned by our father, but I shut such thoughts up in my heart and never asked my father about you again; as he never spoke of the matter again himself, it was as if forgotten, and years passed, until our unexpected reunion tonight.

“I hid myself and eavesdropped, and heard that you are at heart nothing like your mother, but are instead faithful and true, a filial daughter and obedient. I heard too of your sad fate, how though you served well your adoptive father and mother, harsh though they are, you were not allowed to meet the man you love; I saw you beleaguered by a pitiless villain, and wounded by him. Were I to explain this through samsara, I should call it the consequences of your true mother Ayame’s wickedness, but you are nevertheless your father’s child. Though taken by force you have not been defiled—you have refused to surrender your chastity, even unto death—and in extremity you think of your parents. Your faithful virtue and filial piety were not in vain, for when you least expected it you found your brother, who immediately avenged you upon your enemy, striking him just where he struck you, below the left breast. Good must needs be rewarded with good, and evil with evil. Your sad fate in this life may be due to your real mother. In the life to come, your meritorious virtue shall without a doubt result in your achieving Buddhahood.

“I cannot speak of your filial heart to our father, who was the foremost of the senior vassals of the house of Nerima. Blaming his second wife’s violent death on his own lack of virtue, he petitioned his lord until finally he was allowed to shave his head and enter the Way as an initiate—but he remained, nevertheless, an elder of the clan. And thus it was that last year, in the Battle of Ikebukuro, after rendering incomparable service, he was struck down by Kamado Sabohei, a retainer of the Overseer Sadamasa. He was sixty-two at his death. I shall either avenge him, as I aspire to do, or die at the hand of mine enemy. I had cause to disguise myself, however temporarily, as a practitioner of austerities; now I shall become an initiate, but deceive the world with my unshaven head. I shall model my dharma name after my father’s, and call myself Inuyama Dōsetsu Tadatomo.

“Therefore let me strike or be struck: I shall not be long in this world, and though you precede me, I will be your helpmate on the road to that darkling land, I will reconcile you with the honorable spirit of our father, I will bring parent and child face to face after the flesh has passed away. Let that be your memento of your last extremity. O my sister, O my sister,” he said in utmost earnest, displaying every evidence of solicitousness as he explained it all to her. He tended to her, a brave warrior accustomed to wounds, but fierce as he looked, he was her flesh and blood, and the truth of that would not be hidden. Indeed, by the time he had delivered his lengthy story, in one telling, the moon (it was the nineteenth of the month) had risen, replacing the wildfire in illumining the scene: deepest midnight was fast approaching.

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

1. Bakin writes characters that mean “old man in the moonlight,” which refers to a story in the Tang-era collection Xu Youguailu (J. Zoku yūkairoku). He prophesied matrimonial connections. Bakin glosses the characters musubu no kami, “God of Binding,” a matrimonial figure from Shintō belief.

2. Bakin writes characters that mean “female dog” and would normally be read meinu or meitainu; the latter word was also a derogatory term for a woman. He glosses the characters as ama, a more common derogatory term for a woman.

3. These were vambraces reinforced with metal strips that resembled bamboo grass.

4. Fengcheng, or Feng Fortress, was the place where the famous swords Great Arc and Dragon’s Spring were forged; see Chapter XIX, note 5. Wugong, or Wu Palace, may be a reference to the famous paired swords Gan Jiang and Mo Ye (named after the husband-and-wife swordsmiths who forged them); the swords were commissioned by the King of Wu. “Three feet of ice” and “box of frost” may be figurative references to swords themselves, as the coldness of a steel blade is a frequently emphasized quality.

5. These are listed in Chapter 6 of Wuzazu.

6. A second-century Daoist master.

7. That is, the Rokujō Emperor (1164–76; r. 1165–68). The Nin’an era lasted from 1166 to 1169.

8. Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–99), founder of the Kamakura shogunate. In the Battle of Ishibashiyama in 1180 he led the Minamoto forces in a losing effort against the Taira forces.

9. Ushiwakamaru was a childhood name of Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159–89), Yoritomo’s younger brother.

10. 1185–90.

11. 1459.

12.Michi comes from his father’s name (the dō in Dōsaku), while matsu means “pine.”

13. 1462.

14.Mutsuki was the traditional name for the first month, which was taken to mark the onset of spring.