Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (17 page)
Read Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories Online
Authors: Ryunosuke Akutagawa
His shoulders felt painfully stiff. His head ached. He could not even apply himself to his reading, normally one of his favorite activities. The mere sound of footsteps in the corridor or of voices in the house was enough to break his concentration. As the symptoms grew more severe, the tiniest stimuli kept preying on his nerves.
If, for example, a black-lacquer tobacco tray bore a decoration of creeping vines in gold, the delicate stalks and leaves would upset him. The sight of sharp, pointed objects such as ivory chopsticks or bronze fire tongs would make him anxious. His condition finally deteriorated to the point where the intersecting borders of tatami mats or the four corners of a ceiling would fill him with the same nervous tension he might experience in staring at a sharp blade.
Shuri could do nothing but cower in his room all day, scowling. Anything and everything he did was painful. He often wished that he could end his awareness of his own existence, but his splintered nerves did not permit that. He felt like an ant in a pit, struggling to crawl out of the sand flowing hellishly in on him. Meanwhile, he was surrounded by the family's “hereditary retainers,” men with no comprehension of what was going on inside him, who wasted their time and energy dreading the worst.
None of them can understand my suffering
. Such thoughts
seemed to intensify Shuri's nervous condition. Every little thing sent him into a frenzy. His shouts could frequently be heard in the next estate. Often he would reach for a sword on the rack. To everyone who witnessed these outbursts, he seemed almost to have become a different person. Spasms would run through his sunken yellow cheeks, and his eyes would take on a strange, murderous glint. During his worst attacks, his trembling hands would tear at the hair of his temples. His attendants saw that he was having one of his fits, and would warn each other to keep away from him.
Shuri feared that he was losing his mind, as of course did those around him. Just as naturally, he resented their fear, but he could not quell his own. When a fit subsided and a greater melancholy weighed down upon him, he would sometimes feel the fear shoot through him like a bolt of lightning, along with an ominous suspicion that the fear was itself a sign of impending madness.
What if I go crazy?
Everything turned dark at the thought.
Eventually the irritation caused by the endless stream of stimuli from the outside world would expunge the fear of madness. The irritation could also, conversely, awaken him to his fear. His mind ran in endless circles from one anxiety to the next, like a cat chasing its own tail.
Shuri's fits became a source of dread for his entire retinue. The one most seriously troubled by them was the House Elder, Maejima Rin'emon.
Although officially titled “House Elder,” as if he were the hereditary chief retainer in Shuri's branch of the Itakura family, Rin'emon had in fact been dispatched by Itakura Shikibu,
1
lord of the main house, to be “attached” to Shuri's household. He was, in effect, a spy for the main house keeping watch over the branch house. Thus even Shuri, the master here, always treated him with deference. Rin'emon was a big, ruddy man who had almost no experience of illness, and among the household's many samurai, there were few with superior accomplishments in both the civil and martial arts. Thus, Rin'emon acted as
Shuri's advisor in all matters. His custom of freely offering “loyal remonstrance” to his master won him the nickname “the Itakura Family's
Å
kubo Hikoza.”
2
Once it became obvious to him that Shuri's fits were growing worse, Rin'emon began to agonize over the fate of the household, to the point of being unable to sleep at night. Shuri would soon be visiting Edo Castle, where he would formally announce to the Sh
Å
gun that he had recovered from his illness. If he suffered a fit while in the Castle, there was no telling how he might offend one of the Great Lords in attendance or one of the other bannermen with whom he would be seated. If an insult led to bloodshed in the Castle, Shuri's entire 7,000-
koku
estate could well be confiscated. Nor were cautionary precedents difficult to find: was there not the HottaâInaba clash
3
to consider?
Such thoughts kept Rin'emon in a continual state of agitation. As far as he was concerned, moreover, Shuri's fits were due not to an illness of the body but to an illness of the spirit. And so, just as he used to remonstrate with Shuri against willfulness and extravagance, now he boldly sought to remonstrate with him about his nervous exhaustion.
Rin'emon would offer Shuri his unpalatable counsel whenever the occasion arose, but there was no sign this did anything to moderate the fits. Quite the opposite: the more Rin'emon found fault and fretted over Shuri's behavior, the worse the condition became. One time the young lord came dangerously close to slashing Rin'emon with his sword. “How dare you speak to me that way?” he shouted. “You forget that I am your lord! I'd cut you down if I didn't have the Main House to think about.” What Rin'emon saw in Shuri's eyes was no longer simple anger. It had become an unquenchable hatred.
As Rin'emon continued to demonstrate his loyalty by feeding Shuri one bitter pill after another, the convoluted feelings between master and retainer grew increasingly turbulent. No longer was it merely a matter of Shuri's coming to hate Rin'emon: a feeling of hatred had begun to germinate in Rin'emon's heart as well. Rin'emon was not aware of this, of
course. He believed that his loyalty toward Shuri would remain forever unchangedâexcept in one eventuality.
“If the master does not behave like a master, the retainer need not behave like a retainer”: this was not only the Way taught by the philosopher Mencius
4
but the natural Way of humanity that lay behind Mencius. Not that Rin'emon agreed with such a view; he was determined to give his all as a loyal retainer. But bitter experience had shown him that his unpalatable counsel had no effect. He therefore resigned himself to resorting to the final measure that he had, until now, kept locked in his breast: he would have to force Shuri into retirement and arrange for the adoption of an heir from another branch of the Itakura lineage.
The House came before anything else, Rin'emon believed. The incumbent must be sacrificed before the House was sacrificed. This was especially true for the eminent House of Itakura, which had maintained an unblemished reputation ever since the time of its founding progenitor, Itakura Shir
Å
zaemon Katsushige. His son Matazaemon Shigemune won fame as the Sh
Å
gun's Military Governor
5
in Kyoto, a post he inherited from his father. Matazaemon's younger brother, Mondo Shigemasa, was honored by the great Tokugawa founder, Ieyasu, himself, who assigned him the crucial role of supervising the signing of the peace treaty after the Winter Siege of Osaka Castle in the nineteenth year of Keich
Å
.
6
This was the beginning of an illustrious career for Mondo: as commander of the Western Army when the Tokugawa forces suppressed the Shimabara Rebellion in the fourteenth year of Kan'ei, he was honored to fly the Sh
Å
gun's family banner at the siege of Amakusa.
7
Rin'emon knew that he could never face the Itakura ancestors in the other world if he allowed a stain upon the honor of such a distinguished lineage.
With such thoughts in mind, Rin'emon conducted a private search for other likely members of the Itakura family, and he was happy to find that Itakura Sado-no-kami Katsukiyo, who was serving the Sh
Å
gun as a Junior Councilor
8
at the time, still had three sons living at home. If Rin'emon were to apply to the
Sh
Å
gun for permission to adopt one of those sons as the heir to the house in place of Shuri, the plan would almost surely be approved. Such negotiations would, of course, have to be kept absolutely secret from both Shuri and his consort. Only when his desperate ruminations had reached this point did Rin'emon feel he had emerged into the light. The feeling was clouded, though, by an undeniable tinge of sorrow such as he had never known before. “This is all for the sake of the House,” he told himself, but behind his resolve he sensed, indistinctly, a certain effort at self-vindication, and the awareness hovered there like a barely perceptible halo around the moon.
What Shuri, with his delicate health, hated most about Rin'emon was his robust constitution. Next he hated the quiet power that Rin'emon possessed over him as an “attached” House Elder. And finally he hated the way Rin'emon's loyalty was centered entirely upon the House. “You forget that I am your lord!” he had shouted at Rin'emon, his words smoldering with the dark flames of his complex hatred.
And now, suddenly, from his own lady's mouth, came word of this plot against him! Rin'emon was planning to force him into retirement and adopt the son of Itakura Sado-no-kami to take his place. She had heard of it by chance, and when Shuri heard it from her in turn, he was, understandably, wide-eyed with rage.
Yes, it well could be that Rin'emon was deeply concerned for the House of Itakura. But did “loyalty” mean serving the House to the point of casting one's present master aside? Moreover, Rin'emon's fears for the House could well be groundless.
And for these groundless fears he is willing to force me into retirement
, thought Shuri. Perhaps behind Rin'emon's great show of “loyalty” lay an ambition to seize control of the House for himself. For such an outright act of disloyalty, no punishment could be too cruel.
As soon as he heard about Rin'emon's plot from his consort, Shuri summoned old Tanaka Usaemon,
9
who had been his primary mentor and guardian in childhood.
“I want you to strangle that Rin'emon bastard!”
Usaemon cocked his graying head to one side. Aged beyond his years, his face had added still more wrinkles owing to the recent anxieties. Usaemon was not happy about Rin'emon's plan either, but after all, Rin'emon had been “attached” here by the Main House.
“Strangulation would be too harsh a punishment,” he said. “Ordering him to slit his belly open like a true samurai would be another matter, however.”
Shuri looked at Usaemon with mocking eyes. Then he gave two or three hard shakes of his head.
“No, that animal doesn't deserve
seppuku
. Strangle him! Strangle him!”
Inexplicably, though, even as he spoke these cruel words, tears gushed down his pale cheeks, and he once again began tearing at the hair of his temples.
Almost immediately, word of the order for his strangulation reached Rin'emon from a good friend who was one of Shuri's close retainers.
“Fine,” he declared. “That does it. I have my own pride. I have no intention of letting them strangle me just like that.”
The moment he heard the news, he felt the indefinable anxiety that had been dogging him melt away without a trace. Now his heart was filled with outright hatred for Shuri. Shuri was no longer a lord to him. He could hate the man without reserve. Such was the instantaneousâthough unconsciousâreasoning behind the sudden brightening in Rin'emon's heart.
Rin'emon thereupon took his wife and children and retainers with him and vacated Shuri's compound in broad daylight. Following proper procedure, he left his new address posted on an inside wall. Rin'emon himself led the way, carrying his lance under his arm. The entire retinue, including young samurai and servants helping the infirm and carrying military gear and footwear, amounted to no more than ten people. With total composure, they walked out through the front gate together.
This occurred on the last day of the third month of the fourth year of Enky
Å
. Outside the gate, a tepid wind hurled clouds of
mingled sand and cherry blossoms against the compound's fortified latticed windows. Rin'emon stood in the wind, surveying the thoroughfare that stretched away to either side. And then, with his lance, he signaled to the group, “Go left.”