Musashi: Bushido Code (37 page)

Otsū, however, stood still at the crossroads. Takuan relaxed, becoming again the old friend she had known before. He warned her of the dangers lurking in the life she was trying to lead and tried to convince her there were other ways to find happiness. Otsū remained unmoved.

Presently Jōtarō came running back with the mask over his face. Takuan froze when he saw it, instinctively feeling that this was the future face of Otsū, the one he would see after she had suffered on her long journey along the path of darkness.

"I'll go now," said Otsū, stepping away from him.

Jōtarō, clinging to her sleeve, said, "Yes, let's go! Now!"

Takuan lifted his eyes to the white clouds, lamenting his failure. "There's nothing more I can do," he said. "The Buddha himself despaired of saving women."

"Good-bye, Takuan," said Otsū. "I'm bowing here to Sekishūsai, but would you also tell him thank you and good-bye for me?"

"Ah, even I'm beginning to think priests are crazy. Everywhere they go, they meet no one but people rushing toward hell." Takuan raised his hands, let them drop and said very solemnly, "Otsū, if you begin to drown in the Six Evil Ways or the Three Crossings, call out my name. Think of me, and call my name! Until then, all I can say is, travel on as far as you can and try to be careful!"

Book III • FIRE

Sasaki Kojirō

Just south of Kyoto, the Yodo River wound around a hill called Momoyama (the site of Fushimi Castle), then flowed on through the Yamashiro Plain toward the ramparts of Osaka Castle, some twenty miles farther to the southwest. Partly owing to this direct water link, each political ripple in the Kyoto area produced immediate repercussions in Osaka, while in Fushimi it seemed that every word spoken by an Osaka samurai, let alone an Osaka general, was reported as a portent of the future.

Around Momoyama, a great upheaval was in progress, for Tokugawa Ieyasu had decided to transform the way of life that had flourished under Hideyoshi. Osaka Castle, occupied by Hideyori and his mother, Yodogimi, still clung desperately to the vestiges of its faded authority, as the setting sun holds fast to its vanishing beauty, but real power resided at Fushimi, where Ieyasu had chosen to live during his extended trips to the Kansai region. The clash between old and new was visible everywhere. It could be discerned in the boats plying the river, in the deportment of the people on the highways, in popular songs, and in the faces of the displaced samurai searching for work.

The castle at Fushimi was under repair, and the rocks disgorged from the boats onto the riverbank formed a virtual mountain. Most of them were huge boulders, at least six feet square and three or four feet high. They fairly sizzled under a boiling sun. Though it was autumn by the calendar, the sweltering heat was reminiscent of the dog days immediately following the early summer rainy season.

Willow trees near the bridge shimmered with a whitish glint, and a large cicada zigzagged crazily from the river into a small house near the bank. The roofs of the village, deprived of the gentle colors their lanterns swathed them in at twilight, were a dry, dusty gray. In the heat of high noon, two laborers, mercifully freed for half an hour from their backbreaking work, lay sprawled on the broad surface of a boulder, chatting about what was on everybody's lips.

"You think there'll be another war?"

"I don't see why not. There doesn't seem to be anybody strong enough to keep things under control."

"I guess you're right. The Osaka generals seem to be signing up all the rōnin they can find."

They would, I suppose. Maybe I shouldn't say this too loud, but I heard the Tokugawas are buying guns and ammunition from foreign ships."

"If they are, why is Ieyasu letting his granddaughter Senhime marry Hideyori?"

"How should I know? Whatever he's doing, you can bet he has his reasons. Ordinary people like us can't be expected to know what Ieyasu has in mind."

Flies buzzed about the two. A swarm covered two nearby oxen. Still hitched to empty timber carts, the beasts lazed in the sun, stolid, impassive and drooling at the mouth.

The real reason the castle was undergoing repairs was not known to the lowly laborer, who assumed that Ieyasu was to stay there. Actually, it was one phase of a huge building program, an important part of the Tokugawa scheme of government. Construction work on a large scale was also being carried out in Edo, Nagoya, Suruga, Hikone, Otsu and a dozen other castle towns. The purpose was to a large extent political, for one of Ieyasu's methods of maintaining control over the daimyō was to order them to undertake various engineering projects. Since none was powerful enough to refuse, this kept the friendly lords too busy to grow soft, while simultaneously forcing the daimyō who'd opposed Ieyasu at Sekigahara to part with large portions of their incomes. Still another aim of the government was to win the support of the common people, who profited both directly and indirectly from extensive public works.

At Fushimi alone, nearly a thousand laborers were engaged in extending the stone battlements, with the incidental result that the town around the castle experienced a sudden influx of peddlers, prostitutes and horseflies—all symbols of prosperity. The masses were delighted with the good times Ieyasu had brought, and merchants relished the thought that on top of all this there was a good chance of war—bringing even greater profits. Goods were moving briskly, and even now the bulk of them were military supplies. After fingering their collective abacus, the larger entrepreneurs had concluded that this was where the big money was.

City folk were fast forgetting the balmy days of Hideyoshi's regime and instead speculating on what might be gained in the days ahead. It made little difference to them who was in power; so long as they could satisfy their own petty wants, they saw no reason to complain. Nor did Ieyasu disappoint them in this respect, for he contrived to scatter money as he might pass out candy to children. Not his own money, to be sure, but that of his potential enemies.

In agriculture, too, he was instituting a new system of control. No longer were local magnates allowed to govern as they pleased or to conscript farmers at will for outside labor. From now on, the peasants were to be permitted to farm their lands—but to do very little else. They were to be kept ignorant of politics and taught to rely on the powers that be.

The virtuous ruler, to Ieyasu's way of thinking, was one who did not let the tillers of the soil starve but at the same time ensured that they did not rise above their station; this was the policy by which he intended to perpetuate Tokugawa rule. Neither the townspeople nor the farmers nor the daimyō realized that they were being carefully fitted into a feudal system that would eventually bind them hand and foot. No one was thinking of what things might be like in another hundred years. No one, that is, except Ieyasu.

Nor were the laborers at Fushimi Castle thinking of tomorrow. They had modest hopes of getting through the day, the quicker the better. Though they talked of war and when it might break out, grand plans to maintain peace and increase prosperity had nothing to do with them. Whatever happened, they could not be much worse off than they were.

"Watermelon! Anybody want a watermelon?" called a farmer's daughter, who came around at this time every day. Almost as soon as she appeared, she managed to make a sale to some men matching coins in the shadow of a large rock. Jauntily, she went on from group to group, calling, "Won't you buy my melons?"

"You crazy? You think we've got money for watermelons?"

"Over here! I'll be glad to eat one—if it's free."

Disappointed because her initial luck had been deceptive, the girl approached a young worker sitting between two boulders, his back propped against one, his feet against the other, and his arms around his knees. "Watermelon?" she asked, not very hopefully.

He was thin, his eyes sunken, and his skin ruddily sunburned. A shroud of fatigue dimmed his obvious youth; still, his closer friends would have recognized him as Hon'iden Matahachi. Wearily he counted some grimy coins into the palm of his hand and gave them to the girl.

When he leaned back against the rock again, his head drooped morosely. The slight effort had exhausted him. Gagging, he leaned to one side and began to spit up on the grass. He lacked the little strength it would have taken to retrieve the watermelon, which had tumbled from his knees. He stared dully at it, his black eyes revealing no trace of strength or hope.

"The swine," he mumbled weakly. He meant the people he would like to strike back at: Okō, with her whitened face; Takezō, with his wooden sword. His first mistake had been to go to Sekigahara; his second to succumb to the lascivious widow. He had come to believe that but for these two events, he would be at home in Miyamoto now, the head of the Hon'iden family, a husband with a beautiful wife, and the envy of the village.

"I suppose Otsū must hate me now ... though I wonder what she's doing." In his present circumstances, thinking occasionally of his former fiancée was his only comfort. When Okō's true nature had finally sunk in, he had begun to long for Otsū again. He had thought of her more and more since the day he'd had the good sense to break loose from the Yomogi Teahouse.

On the night of his departure, he had discovered that the Miyamoto Musashi who was acquiring a reputation as a swordsman in the capital was his old friend Takezō. This severe shock was followed almost immediately by strong waves of jealousy.

With Otsū in mind, he had stopped drinking and attempted to slough off his laziness and his bad habits. But at first he was unable to find any suitable work. He cursed himself for having been out of the swim of things for five years, while an older woman supported him. For a time it appeared as though it was too late to change.

"Not
too late," he'd assured himself. "I'm only twenty-two. I can do whatever I want, if I try!" While anyone might experience this sentiment, in Matahachi's case it meant shutting his eyes, leaping over an abyss of five years, and hiring himself out as a day laborer at Fushimi.

Here he had worked hard, slaving steadily day after day while the sun beat down on him from summer into fall. He was rather proud of himself for sticking to it.

"I'll show them all!" he was thinking now, despite his queasiness. "No reason I can't make a name for myself. I can do anything Takezō can do! I can do even more, and I will. Then I'll have my revenge, despite Okō. Ten years is all I need."

Ten years? He stopped to calculate how old Otsū would be by then. Thirty-one! Would she stay single, wait for him all that time? Not likely. Matahachi had no inkling of recent developments in Mimasaka, no way of knowing that his was but a pipe dream, but ten years—never! It would have to be no more than five or six. Within that time he would have to make a success of himself; that was all there was to it. Then he could go back to the village, apologize to Otsū and persuade her to marry him. "That's the only way!" he exclaimed. "Five years, six at most." He stared at the watermelon and a glimmer of light returned to his eyes.

Just then one of his fellow workers rose up beyond the rock in front of him, and resting his elbows on the boulder's broad top, called, "Hey, Matahachi. What're you mumbling to yourself about? Say, your face is green. Watermelon rotten?"

Matahachi, though he forced a wan smile, was seized by another wave of dizziness. Saliva streamed from his mouth as he shook his head. "It's nothing, nothing at all," he managed to gasp. "Guess I got a little too much sun. Let me take it easy here for an hour or so."

The burly stone haulers gibed at his lack of strength, albeit good-naturedly. One of them asked, "Why'd you buy a watermelon when you can't eat it?"

"I bought it for you fellows," answered Matahachi. "I thought it'd make up for not being able to do my share of the work."

"Now, that was smart. Hey, men! Watermelon! Have some, on Matahachi."

Splitting the melon on the corner of a rock, they fell to it like ants, snatching greedily at the sweet, dripping hunks of red pulp. It was all gone when moments later a man jumped up on a rock and yelled, "Back to work, all of you!"

The samurai in charge emerged from a hut, whip in hand, and the stench of sweat spread over the earth. Presently the melody of a rock haulers' chantey rose from the site, as a gigantic boulder was shifted with large levers onto rollers and dragged along with ropes as thick as a man's arm. It advanced ponderously, like a moving mountain.

With the boom in castle construction, these rhythmical songs proliferated. Though the words were rarely written down, no less a personage than Lord Hachisuka of Awa, who was in charge of building Nagoya Castle, quoted several verses in a letter. His lordship, who would hardly have had occasion to so much as touch construction materials, had apparently learned them at a party. Simple compositions, like the following, they'd become something of a fad in society as well as among work crews.

From Awataguchi we've pulled them—

Dragged rock after rock after rock.

For our noble Lord Tōgorō.

Ei, sa, ei, sa ...

Pull—ho! Drag—ho! Pull—ho! Drag—ho!

His lordship speaks,

Our arms and legs tremble.

We're loyal to him—to the death.

The letter writer commented, "Everybody, young and old alike, sings this, for it is part of the floating world we live in."

While the laborers at Fushimi were not aware of these social reverberations, their songs did reflect the spirit of the times. The tunes popular when the Ashikaga shogunate was in decline had been on the whole decadent and had been sung mostly in private, but during the prosperous years of Hideyoshi's regime, happy, cheerful songs were often heard in public. Later, with the stern hand of Ieyasu making itself felt, the melodies lost some of their rollicking spirit. As Tokugawa rule became stronger, spontaneous singing tended to give way to music composed by musicians in the shōgun's employ.

Matahachi rested his head on his hands. It burned with fever, and the heave-ho singing buzzed indistinctly in his ears, like a swarm of bees. All alone now, he lapsed into depression.

"What's the use," he groaned. "Five years. Suppose I do work hard—what'll it get me? For a whole day's work, I make only enough to eat that day. If I take a day off, I don't eat."

Sensing someone standing near him, he looked up and saw a tall young man. His head was covered with a deep, coarsely woven basket hat, and at his side hung a bundle of the sort carried by
shugyōsha.
An emblem in the form of a half-open steel-ribbed fan adorned the front of his hat. He was gazing thoughtfully at the construction work and sizing up the terrain.

After a time he seated himself next to a flat, broad rock, which was just the right height to serve as a writing table. He blew away the sand on top, along with a line of ants marching across it, then with his elbows propped on the rock and his head on his hands, resumed his intense survey of the surroundings. Though the sun's glare hit him full in the face, he remained motionless, seemingly impervious to the discomforting heat. He did not notice Matahachi, who was still too miserable to care whether anyone was around or not. The other man meant nothing to him. He sat with his back to the newcomer and spasmodically retched.