Bundori: A Novel of Japan (3 page)

The news did please Sano. “Your efforts on my behalf are much appreciated, Noguchi-
san
,” he said, offering the formal but heartfelt expressions of gratitude dictated by convention.

Sano, single at the advanced age of thirty-one, yearned for a wife and family-especially a son, who would carry on his name. He also harbored a romantic, albeit unrealistic wish for the emotional intimacy that an arranged marriage might, but wouldn’t necessarily bring. He hadn’t yet married because his father, eager to improve the family’s economic and social status, had refused to let Sano take a wife of their own class, instead sending proposals only to daughters of wealthy, high-ranking samurai affiliated with major clans. All the proposals had been rejected. But now, with his advancement, Sano found his prospects much improved. And Noguchi, acting as his go-between-as a samurai’s superior often did-had done well by him. Ueda Reiko’s family were hereditary Tokugawa vassals, her father the south magistrate of Edo and a very rich man.

“If all goes well with the
miai
,” Noguchi said, “why, then, very soon-after the period of mourning for your father is over, of course-I shall have the pleasure of attending your wedding. Oh, my.”

He smiled, but his frown-wrinkles slid higher on his head. Sano waited, sensing that the archivist had concerns unrelated to the marriage negotiations.

Finally Noguchi said, “Sometimes it is possible to convey, without actually saying in so many words, that although you would be glad to perform a task, your time might be spent more profitably otherwise.”

He’d switched from direct speech to the circumspect style used by many members of the refined upper classes. Watching Sano closely, he continued circling his point. “It is also possible to leave the impression that a task would be better given to someone else. Without, of course, casting any doubt upon one’s own willingness or ability. Even not knowing the particular circumstances, I believe that a clever man might manage to bring others around to his own point of view, without risking censure or loss of face.”

Sano was utterly mystified. “Yes, I see,” he said, but only because Noguchi was looking up into his face and leaning against him as they walked, the pressure of his body an unspoken plea for understanding.

Noguchi bobbed his head for emphasis. “And of course, you will remember that His Excellency is a very busy man. Small matters must inevitably slip from his memory now and then. But this is not an entirely bad thing.” His earnest gaze held Sano’s as they reached the gate that led to the palace precinct.

Now his meaning became clear to Sano. Many officials, Noguchi included, were so afraid of disgracing themselves or getting in trouble that they went to great lengths to avoid doing anything, good or bad, that would draw the shogun’s notice. They wouldn’t openly advise their subordinates to ignore a direct order. But Noguchi, having evidently heard that the shogun had summoned Sano-although not the reason-was telling him to use every means available to escape whatever task given to him. Or, failing that, to wait before acting, in hopes that Tokugawa Tsunayoshi would forget about it. Sano understood, but couldn’t share Noguchi’s attitude.

He waited until they’d cleared the checkpoint and entered the palace garden. Then he said, “I appreciate your concern, Noguchi-
san
, but whatever our lord orders, I must do, without evasion or delay.”

Noguchi gasped at Sano’s bluntness. “Oh, no, I never meant to imply that you should disregard a command from His Excellency!” he blurted. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth and looked around to see if anyone was listening.

The palace garden wore its full spring glory. Guards patrolled white gravel paths that wound through a fresh green lawn studded with flowering cherry and magnolia trees. Gardeners swept the paths and tended azalea bushes bright with red blossoms. Officials and their attendants strolled the garden, their brilliant garments adding more color to the scene. Still more officials lingered outside the palace, a low, vast building with whitewashed plaster walls, dark wooden doors, beams, and window lattices, and a many-gabled roof of gleaming grey tile. Sano knew why Noguchi feared eavesdroppers: even a hint of disobedience or disloyalty could be interpreted as treason and punished by exile or death. Edo abounded with spies and informers, many within the castle itself. Any of those officials or servants could be a
metsuke
-one of the shogun’s intelligence agents-or simply someone eager to advance himself by discrediting his colleagues.

“I was merely giving you the benefit of my experience,” Noguchi finished in a loud whisper.

Sano couldn’t follow the advice, coming as it did from someone seeking only to live out his remaining years in peace. But Noguchi meant well. “Yes, I know. Thank you for your advice, Noguchi-
san
. I’ll keep it in mind.”

They reached the palace entrance. After they’d made their farewells, Noguchi shook his head and said in parting, “Young men. You are all so rash and impetuous. I hope you will not come to regret your actions, Sano-
san
.” Then, more cheerfully: “Well,
gambatte kudasai
!” Do your best, and good luck.

Sano gained admittance from the guards posted at the palace’s massive, carved door. As he removed his shoes and hung his swords in the huge entry hall, he thought about Noguchi’s warning and felt a twinge of trepidation. He had much to learn about life at the heart of the Tokugawa
bakufu
-the military government that ruled the land. Would he be making a mistake by trying to do his duty to both his lord and his father? The idea seemed fantastic. He walked along the polished cypress floors of the corridors that led through the building’s outer portion, which served as government offices, trying to shed his unease. But his heart was racing, and his hands turned clammy with nervous sweat. Reaching the heavily guarded doors that led to the No theater, he paused, bracing himself for his encounter with the nation’s supreme military dictator.

“
Sōsakan
Sano Ichirō, to see His Excellency,” he said to the guards.

They bowed, slid open the doors, and stood aside to let him enter. Swallowing his apprehension, Sano went in.

He found himself standing on a veranda overlooking a huge gravel courtyard bordered by rows of pines. Ahead of him to his left stood the No stage, a raised wooden platform with a roof supported on four pillars, which faced right. Seated at the rear of the stage, three drummers and two flutists played a solemn, archaic melody. Under a small potted cherry tree at center stage lay an actor dressed in the striped robe of an itinerant monk, presumably asleep; the chorus and other actors sat in the wings. Sano turned his attention to the man he’d sworn to serve.

The sliding doors of the building opposite the stage stood open. Inside, Tsunayoshi, the fifth Tokugawa shogun, occupied a dais. Seated upon piled cushions, he wore an opulent silk kimono patterned in shades of gold, brown, and cream under a black surcoat with broad padded shoulders, and the cylindrical black cap that marked his rank. He held a closed fan. He was smiling, nodding his head in time to the music. Tsunayoshi, Sano had heard, enjoyed No above all the other arts he patronized. He seemed unaware of the bored expressions of the ten retainers who, forced to watch with him, knelt on either side of the dais.

Sano felt a touch of surprise when he looked at Tsunayoshi, whom he didn’t remember as looking quite so small or benign, or so old for his forty-three years. He had to remind himself that this was the descendant of the great Tokugawa Ieyasu, who, less than a hundred years ago, had triumphed over many warring clans to bring the country under his control. And Tsunayoshi himself commanded the authority he’d inherited. His word was law; he held the power of life and death over his subjects.

A young actor carrying a sword came down the bridgeway that led from the curtained door of the dressing room. He wore a long, flowing black wig, tall black cap, gold brocade robe, and broad, divided scarlet skirt. Taking up a position at the left front of the stage, he performed a slow, stylized dance and sang:

“
Driven by my worldly shame,

In ghostly guise I come

To the place where I died,

Taking the shape I had

When I lived upon the earth,

To tell this sleeping monk

My tale of long ago.
”

Sano recognized the play as
Tadanori
, written almost three hundred years earlier by the great dramatist Zeami Motokiyo. Tadanori, lord of Satsuma, had been a poet-warrior of the Heike clan. When the Imperial House compiled an anthology of great poetry, they included one of Tadanori’s poems unsigned, because the Heike were regarded as rebels. Tadanori died in battle, lamenting the exclusion of his name. In the play, his ghost tells a traveling monk his sad story so that his fame as a poet need not be forgotten.

“
My poem, ’tis true, was chosen for the Great Book,

Alas! Because of my lord’s displeasure,

It does not bear my
- ”

The shogun rapped loudly on the dais with his fan. The actor, halted in midverse, stumbled in his dance.

“Not like that,” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi shouted. “Like this!” He sang the lines himself, in a high, reedy voice at odds with his exalted status. Sano failed to see any improvement over the actor’s rendition, but the rest of the audience murmured in approval. “Never mind, ahh, you are dismissed. Next!”

The actor slunk off stage. The music resumed, and another actor started down the bridgeway. Now Sano understood that this wasn’t a performance given by the shogun’s troupe of professional actors, but an audition for amateurs, those among the Tokugawa vassals and daimyo clans-families who governed the country’s provinces-who curried favor by catering to their lord’s taste in entertainment. A sudden awful thought occurred to Sano: Did Tsunayoshi want
him
to audition? His visions of performing some feat of great courage began to fade, and he took an involuntary step backward. Then the shogun beckoned.

“Ahh,
Sōsakan
Sano,” Tokugawa Tsunayoshi called. “Approach.” To the actors and musicians: “Go away until I call you.”

The men on stage bowed, walked down the bridgeway, and disappeared into the dressing room. Sano, self-conscious before the curious gazes of the watching officials, crossed the courtyard and knelt before the dais.

“I await Your Excellency’s command,” he said, bowing with his forehead touching the ground and his arms extended straight in front of him.

“Rise,” the shogun ordered, “and come closer.”

Sano did. He locked his knees to still their trembling as Tsunayoshi studied him. Risking a direct glance at the shogun, he wasn’t surprised to see lack of recognition in the mild eyes, or puzzlement creasing the thin, aristocratic face. If he’d forgotten Tsunayoshi’s features, so must the great dictator have forgotten his.

“Well, ahh,” Tsunayoshi said at last. “You seem an able-bodied and able-minded samurai, just right for the task I have in mind. In fact, I cannot think why I have not utilized your services thus far.”

He looked around at his attendants, who offered noncommittal murmurs.

“However, I shall do so now,” Tsunayoshi said. “Kaibara Tōju was murdered last night. His head was severed from his body and mounted like a, ahh, war trophy.”

The nature of the crime shocked Sano, as did the victim’s identity. The taking of trophy heads was a war tradition, not normally practiced in peacetime. Kaibara Tōju was a
hatamoto
, a hereditary Tokugawa vassal-one of many soldiers whose clans had served the shogun’s for generations and held time-honored positions in his vast empire. But neither piece of news disturbed Sano as much as his heart-sinking realization that the shogun was going to ask him to investigate the murder. Too many lives had been ruined or lost during his first and only other case. But Sano’s interest stirred in spite of himself. A not wholly unpleasant surge of fearful anxiety made him feel more alive than he had in months. Without his realizing it, his short-lived police career had given him a taste for danger and adventure. And he’d always had a yearning to seek and find the truth. Lately he’d had no chance to satisfy either desire. But now…

“The
bundori
was found, ahh-” The shogun paused, frowning in an obvious attempt at recollection.

“On a firewatch tower in the Nihonbashi pharmacists’ district, Your Excellency.”

Silk garments rustled as the shogun and his retainers turned toward the sound of a man’s voice that came from within the building. Following their gazes, Sano saw Chamberlain Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu standing behind the dais. His curiosity roused at the sight of this man, about whom he’d heard much but seen only once before.

Yanagisawa’s combination of height, slimness, graceful carriage, and sharp, elegant features added up to a striking masculine beauty. The keen intelligence of his expression drew attention away from his brilliant, fashionable robes and kept it on his face. Rumor said that Yanagisawa, now thirty-two years old and Tsunayoshi’s protégé since his twenties, had been and still was the shogun’s lover. Whatever the truth, Yanagisawa supposedly had much influence over
bakufu
affairs.

Now Yanagisawa knelt beside the dais, in the place of honor nearest the shogun. The retainers’ obsequious bows and the haste with which they made room for him testified to his power.

“Your Excellency,” he said, bowing to the shogun.

Tsunayoshi smiled in greeting. “Ahh, Chamberlain Yanagisawa.” His voice held a hint of relief, as though he welcomed the arrival of someone more knowledgeable than himself. “We were discussing last night’s unfortunate incident. I have decided to give the task of apprehending the, ahh, murderer to my new
sōsakan
.”

Yanagisawa glanced at Sano. His eyes, large and liquid and enhanced with thick, slanting brows, looked black even in the sunlight, as if the pupils were permanently dilated. The hostility in them pierced Sano to the core. What could he have done to offend the chamberlain?