The Pure Land (31 page)
*
The Shogun’s desperate strategy of opening further ports to the West was extended to Kobe, and a delegation of diplomats and traders, among them Glover and Satow, went there for the inauguration of the new Customs House. They were wandering aimlessly around the area when a rag-tag gang of samurai warriors rode out of the town towards them.
Glover realised something was wrong when the men stopped and dismounted, lined up in straggled ranks and started loading their rifles. Then he realised there was something familiar about the commander marshalling them, something in his demeanour, his bearing. Glover looked again, saw it was Takashi, and in the same moment Takashi saw him, knew him.
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Glover, and he dived for cover as a volley of shots flew high in the air, ripped into the front of the building, damaged the roof tiles, tore the British flag to shreds. Glover peered out through a window, saw the samurai in disarray, some of them jolted backwards by the recoil from their weapons, the use of which
they clearly hadn’t mastered. Takashi was screaming at them and time itself seemed to slow as they began laboriously to reload. But before they could regroup and fire again there was the clatter of hooves and a detachment of British cavalry, summoned from the quayside by the sound of gunfire, were riding towards them. The samurai were swift to remount and they rode off, breakneck, followed by the marines, sabres drawn, ready for battle.
Glover stepped outside, where the rest of the foreigners, Satow among them, picked themselves up and dusted themselves off, looking around, dazed and unbelieving, at the damage to the building.
‘Fucking hell!’ said Glover.
Satow was already scribbling in his notebook.
He recorded the incident in yet another piece for the
Japan
Times
, which appeared a week later.
The troop of samurai, he wrote, were a motley disaffected crew from a number of clans, but predominantly, it seemed, from the local Bizen. They were pro-Mikado, had been part of the rebel alliance, but were also staunchly anti-barbarian. Their commander, incensed at the sight of the foreign devils casually taking charge of the town, had ordered his troops to open fire on them. Only the fact that the samurai had just recently been armed with their American rifles prevented a massacre. They hadn’t mastered the use of the weapons, didn’t understand how to line up a target in the sight, fired wildly in the air. They had been driven off, pursued by the marines.
But the Bizen were better horsemen than they were riflemen, and they knew the twists and turns of the roads and pathways, made good their escape into woodland at the edge of town.
Satow’s tone, as ever, was detached, amused. The British horsemen, he wrote, executed a brilliant cavalry charge down an empty road, returning empty-handed except for a few trophies. These spoils of war included sandals, straw
kasa
rainhats and a bundle of papers, tied with twine, which Satow was handed to
translate and which proved to be highly charged love letters from a young woman. Satow concluded the piece by appealing for calm, repeated his own conviction that this was a random and isolated incident, in no way indicative of a threat from the new regime. But once more, throughout Japan, foreign residences were barricaded and sandbagged, protected by armed guards. Glover, like Satow, still had faith, but the presence of baby Hana made him mindful of any threat, and he doubled the defences at Ipponmatsu.
*
Ito arrived one evening, unannounced, gave Glover absolute reassurance that there was no danger. Rogue elements, renegades from any clan, would be rooted out. In fact Takashi had already been apprehended and would commit seppuku in front of witnesses from the foreign community. He would be punished for his crime, but as a samurai warrior loyal to his clan and his Emperor, he would be allowed to die with honour.
Ito stood, straightbacked and dignified as he said this, and Glover could already see a change in him. This was his old drinking companion, his
ancient trusty drouthy crony
, carouser and reveller and singer of lusty songs about pillowing his head in some beauty’s lap. But that particular song had continued with the line about seizing power and leading the nation. Now he was in the process of doing exactly that. Ito the revolutionary, the rebel, was transforming himself into Ito the statesman.
He even displayed respect for his fallen enemy, the Shogun, telling of his fall with that same resonance as he had used to describe the Four Borders Battle, the speak of myth, turning the hard, spare facts into legend.
‘Tokugawa time over. Osaka Castle fall. Choshu, Satsuma victorious once more. Shogun go, sit at feet of Buddha. Now Mikado make new Japan. We build.’
Again he had composed a tanka poem for the occasion.
Cold rain falls.
Defeated, he lays aside
his fine clothes,
flees to the Buddha
for refuge
.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s drink!’
A month later Glover, for his part in the rebellion, was invited to join a deputation visiting Osaka Castle to see it for themselves. Parkes was there, and Satow, and they rode slowly in procession led by the Choshu and Satsuma Daimyo, Ito and Godai, a contingent of samurai from both clans.
Again it rained, a cold needling downpour that reminded Glover of home. They rode in through the gates, entered the castle keep, and the scene that met them was one of destruction, desolation; the place had been battered by artillery fire, bombarded by cannonshot, then sacked and looted and put to the torch. Great gaps had been blasted in the walls and where the palace had stood was a burned-out ruin, jagged blocks of masonry jutting above what had been a tiled floor. Abandoned weapons, damaged armour, scorched and seared by the heat of the flames, lay scattered here and there, some of it warped and tangled, melted in the fire.
Glover felt none of the triumph he might have expected. Instead there was an emptiness, a kind of melancholy, shared also by Satow and Parkes.
‘Depressing,’ said Satow.
‘It’s not so long since I sat in that very palace,’ said Parkes, ‘being fêted by the Shogun. And I found him the handsomest and most refined of men.’
‘Albeit one unfitted for life in the present age,’ said Satow.
‘It makes one wonder what we may have unleashed in the land,’ said Parkes.
The rain drove harder, advanced in squalls across the courtyard.
The Emperor’s banner flapped above the ruins. If Glover had any misgivings he kept them to himself, said nothing.
*
The three men were invited to attend, as witnesses, the execution, the ritual suicide, of Takashi. The Satsuma had now set up their headquarters in the town, in a spacious temple in its own grounds, and this was where the execution was to take place.
‘Vile business,’ said Parkes, uncomfortable at having to be there.
Satow on the other hand seemed almost to relish the prospect of observing the proceedings at first hand.
Glover, like Parkes, had no wish to attend, but felt it would be an insult to his Japanese hosts to turn down the invitation. He tholed being there, endured it, but he felt his guts clench, his palms sweat, as the prisoner was brought into the temple hall.
Takashi was dressed in robes of rough, dark-blue cotton, walked with the dignity befitting a samurai, in no way cowed or fearful. He was flanked by armed guards in helmets and breastplates, and a few paces behind him, respectful like a retainer, walked a man in grey.
Ito whispered to Glover. ‘He is
kaishaku
.’
‘Executioner?’ said Glover.
‘No,’ said Ito. ‘Friend.’
Takashi stepped up onto a low dais draped with pure white cloth on which had been spread a bright red thick felt rug. He stared ahead, kneeled down on the rug, the man in grey, the kaishaku, kneeling beside the platform.
Takashi bowed, not victim but supplicant. He looked each of the witnesses straight in the eye, bowed to them individually. He held Glover’s gaze only a moment but in that moment Glover felt Takashi was already somewhere else, beyond this place,
beyond even hate or disdain. The look was piercing, cold, detached.
An official in white robes stood in front of Takashi, bowed and presented him with a black lacquer tray on which lay a short wakizashi dagger, unsheathed. Takashi bowed in return, took the knife, held it before him with a kind of reverence, placed it down in front of him. Then he slipped the robe off his shoulders, let it fall about him, sat naked to the waist. Careful and unhurried, he gathered the sleeves and tucked them under his knees, to prevent him falling backward.
The cold in the hall deepened. Every sound was magnified in the tense silence, the sudden muffled bark of a cough, awkward, a scuff, a shuffle as one of the observers, uncomfortable, shifted position, then the studied movements of Takashi himself as he readied himself for the last act of his life.
He took the dagger in his right hand, held it again before his eyes, seemed almost to caress it. Then he drew in a quick sharp intake of breath, and without flinching, drove the blade hard and true, pierced the left side of his belly. The sound that followed was a faint, collective gasp from the witnesses; no matter that they had known what was to happen, had prepared themselves, the harsh actuality was shocking, brutal, took them aback.
Slowly, inch by inch and still unflinching, Takashi drew the blade across from left to right, cut through his own flesh. Parkes looked away. Satow took in every detail, the sound of the knife, the red wound opening, would commit it later to his journal. Glover fixed his gaze on the man’s face, stoic, impassive, focused inward.
When the blade reached the right of the abdomen, Takashi gave it a final twist, a last cut upward, withdrew it, bloodied, and placed it once more in front of him. Then he leaned forward, stretching out his neck. His face for the first time contorted in a grimace of pain, but still he made no sound. The kaishaku leapt to his feet, in one movement drew his sword,
raised it and brought it down, beheaded Takashi with a single swift stroke.
The severed head thudded to the floor; the blood flowed, seeped into the felt rug, deepened the red.
Glover took a last look at the face, suddenly lifeless, eyes shut, the corners of the mouth clenched, turned down in that mask of pain.
Outside in the cold, Parkes had to steady himself, gagged and retched, ready to vomit. Satow was chattering. ‘I didn’t find it at all disgusting.’ He was already scribbling in a pocket notebook. ‘In fact, I thought it a decent and decorous ceremony, rather more respectable than what is produced for public entertainment outside Newgate Prison!’
Glover closed his eyes, could not erase the image of the man’s face, that death mask. And this was how Matsuo had died, brutally, painfully, for the crime of breaking an obscure vow. This code was too harsh, too barbarous. And yet.
Ito approached him, bowed.
‘Emperor’s justice seen to be done.’
‘But with honour.’
‘So.’
*
A clear signal was being sent out. The regime of the Emperor was hospitable to the West and no further attacks on foreigners would be condoned or even tolerated.
The Emperor himself moved to Edo, the former stronghold of the Tokugawa clan, which would now be renamed Tokyo, the Eastern Capital. There he occupied the former Shogun’s palace, and he too assumed a new name; from now he would be known as Meiji, the Enlightened Ruler, and the year would be designated
Meiji Gan Nen
, the first year of his reign.
W
alsh was leaving, getting out, heading home. He came round to Ipponmatsu for a last drink.
‘Here’s to the new Japan!’ said Glover.
‘Good luck to them!’ said Walsh.
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘You know me, Tom. Quit while I’m ahead.’ He looked at Glover over his glass of whisky. ‘Maybe you should do the same.’
‘Quit?’
Walsh laughed. ‘I guess it’s true. You really
don’t
know the meaning of the word!’
‘Why should I quit? We still have so much to do.’
‘We?’
‘I’m part of this, Jack.’
‘I know you’ve invested heavily in this place, Tom. Hell, you bankrolled their goddamn revolution! But financially the situation’s unstable.’
‘That’s to be expected, after a revolution!’
‘They’ve overreached themselves. They can’t pay back their debts.’
‘Not for a while, no.’
‘And if they do pay you back, their currency’s so devalued you’ll lose heavily.’
‘I’m in this for more than the money.’
Walsh chuckled. ‘You
have
come a long way!’
‘I belong here. We’ll make this work.’
‘
We
again.’
‘Aye. That’s the way I see it.’
Tsuru was putting Hana to bed, brought her in to say goodnight to him. The child was barely awake, bleary with sleep, clutched a doll made of coloured cloth. He kissed the top of her wee head, noticed Walsh smiling to himself.
‘Quite the family man!’
Walsh said goodnight to Tsuru, who nodded a polite ‘
Oyasumi
nasai
.’ Glover knew she didn’t approve of him, understood why.
The two men stepped outside, into the cool night, and walked together as far as the gate. Walsh was heading down to the Sakura for one last visit, across
Shian Bashi
and
Omoikiri Bashi
.
‘There are
some
things I’ll miss about this place!’ He chuckled. ‘Don’t suppose I can tempt you to join me? I mean, a family man can still have a fling!’
‘I’m fine,’ said Glover. And he meant it.
*
Walsh was right. The delay, the devaluation meant his debts had accumulated to an alarming degree. Jardine’s alone were pressing him for payment of $100,000 he owed them, money he had borrowed on behalf of the clans. With the fighting effectively over, the arms trade had declined. Glover’s tea business had overexpanded and was failing to turn a profit, his trading in silk had run its course, as had his dealing in opium.
Groom, Harrison and Ringer decided to go their separate ways. They bore Glover no ill will; there was simply a sense that they were no longer able to follow his lead, an implied, if understated, criticism of his headlong rush to support the revolution at all costs.
He argued the revolution was just the beginning; what was required now was industrialisation on a grand scale; the Japanese must mine their own coal, forge their own steel, build their own ships.
They respected his vision, but were no longer committed to it. Instead of expansion, they argued for diversification, specialisation. Ringer would take over the tea factories in his own name. Harrison would set up his own company, returning to property investment as his principal activity. Groom would move to Shanghai, specialise once more in currency exchange.
It took a whole day of argument, negotiation, to thrash out a broad agreement. There were harsh words, accusations, claims and counter-claims. The discussion grew heated, but was grounded in their common respect for one another. The sums the three men would advance him would go some way towards clearing his debts, but it was not enough, not by a long way.
At the end of it, Glover shook hands with all of them, thanked them, wished them well. When they’d left his office he slumped at his desk, exhausted. The air was thick with the fug of tobacco smoke. His head ached.
On the desk was his little collection of mementos, reminders, good luck charms: the bamboo token, the paper butterfly, the silver dollar, the itzibu coin. He had added to these a length of yellow-coloured silk, Ito’s kingire, badge of allegiance to the Emperor. Behind these sat the little Daruma doll, child’s toy, its painted face fierce. He cuffed its head, knocked it over, just to see it right itself, bounce back. Eight times up.
He pulled on his coat, went out into the street, and instead of heading straight home he walked along the waterfront, breathed the evening air, tried to clear his head. He liked this time of day, the sky beginning to darken but still streaked with light, the yellow lamps lit in shops and houses, on the boats at anchor in the bay. He passed the market, on a whim turned in
and walked through its narrow passageways, its clutter of stalls, lost himself in it, surrendered to the cries of traders, the smells that assailed him, of incense and kerosene and hot smoky oil, musky spices and dried fish. It was the end of the day, some of the traders already packing up, and it made him feel a kind of melancholy, an emptiness, a nostalgia for something he couldn’t name. So many lives being lived. So few he would ever know. This place he moved through. This, here, now. The warmth and the sadness of it. The evening light.
A few yards ahead a young woman, her back to him, a shawl round her shoulders, was paying for her few purchases and for some reason the stallholder seemed to be speaking to her roughly. He couldn’t make out the words – even after all these years much of the language was still impenetrable to him – but the tone was unmistakably harsh. The man threw down her purchases, she picked them up and moved on. Glover still couldn’t see her face, but there was something so familiar in the way she moved, the turn of her head, the line of her neck: she reminded him of someone.
Then he saw she had a child with her, a small boy; she took the boy by the hand and hurried away. Glover turned to go then stopped. He knew who it was she had brought to mind. He started walking again. It was just coincidence, a passing resemblance. Then he stopped again, caught. He had to follow her, see for himself. But she had disappeared down one of the aisles, could have turned in any direction, might be deeper into the market or out in the street. Which way to turn? The walkways were crowded, people blocking his way at every turn. Now the smells and the noise were an annoyance, the calls of
Irrashaimase
an irritating litany, the dried fish stink sickening.
The whole business was ridiculous. He would never find her. And in any case, the resemblance was probably imagined, sheer fancy born of his tiredness, his state of mind. He stopped again, turned to retrace his steps, head home, and she stepped out in
front of him, distracted. She was suddenly, undeniably, irrevocably there. Maki.
Dear God.
Maki.
She saw him, let go of the boy’s hand a moment, put her own hand to her throat, and her eyes widened as she recognised him, and the sound that came from her was part gasp, part choked sob, a cry from deep. And the hand went to her mouth, to stifle the sound, then as if remembering the boy again she took his hand once more, pulled him close to her.
‘Maki,’ he said, felt the surge of emotion in his chest. Once as a boy, in Banchory at the falls, he’d seen the salmon in their upstream rush leap out of the water, flip in the air. That was the feeling.
Or a flurry of birds startled from cover.
‘Maki!’
She looked bewildered, in a dream, as she carefully set down the basket she was carrying, held the boy even tighter, bowed.
‘Guraba-san.’
‘Christ, Maki, it’s me! Tom! Your gaijin. The hairy barbarian. Yaban!’
‘I thought you go home,’ she said. ‘To Sucoturando. Not come back to Japan in this life.’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Go home, I mean. But I’ve been back three, four years.’
‘So long time?’ she said.
‘A lot’s happened,’ he said. ‘A hell of a lot. We say, a lot of water under the bridge.’
‘
Hai
,’ she said. ‘
So desu
. Water.’
‘So much has changed.’
‘Much change,’ she said. ‘Everything.’
‘Upheaval,’ he said, gesturing with his arms, trying to encompass it all.
‘Water under bridge.’
‘Aye.’
She’d spoken quietly, now fell silent, pushed back a stray hair that had fallen across her face. She looked tired, a deep weariness in her eyes. She wore no jewellery and her clothes were simple, a dark cotton robe tied with an obi sash at the waist. The boy was burying his face in the robe, hiding there, clinging to her. He peered out, stared up, awed and fearful, at Glover, who looked back, saw him for the first time, this wee frightened creature, eyes wide. There was something in the features, the skin paler than his mother’s, the hair not jet black but light brown, and something too in the eyes that looked out at him. And in the moment Glover knew, beyond all doubt, the way he’d known with Annie and her lad Jamie, at Brig o’ Balgownie in that other life.
He crouched down, spoke quietly to the boy. ‘
O namae wa?
’
The boy buried his face again, hid.
‘His name is Shinsaburo,’ said Maki.
Glover bowed to the boy. ‘Shinsaburo-san.
Yoroshiko onegai
shimasu
.’
The boy peered out again, squinted at him with one eye. Glover covered his own face with his hands, peeked out. The boy was still unsure, moved round behind his mother for safety.
Glover stood up.
‘His father is gaijin?’
‘Yaban,’ she said with the faintest hint of a smile, sad and tired, ironic. ‘You know.’
He asked the question. ‘My son?’
She nodded. ‘
Hai. So desu
.’
He drew in a deep breath. ‘You’re sure?’
She looked right at him, right into him. ‘All that time, was nobody else. You only one.’
He reached out a hand to the boy. The boy turned away, hid again.
His son. Shinsaburo. Flesh of his flesh.
‘God,’ he said. ‘Maki. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I try,’ she said. ‘You not there. Woman at house tell me you gone, maybe not come back.’
‘Tsuru?’
‘
So desu
.’
‘That’s why you left?’
She nodded. ‘Happen all the time. Gaijin go away. Not want to know. Then not easy for me. I pray to Jizo, go to doctor to lose child. But not do it. No hard heart.’ She held the boy close again, tight. ‘So, have to go. Not work at Sakura. Go to home village.’
‘Christ, Maki, if I’d known!’
Her shoulders hunched, her head sagged forward. ‘I also not know. Not know you. Not know what you do.’
He tried to take it in, adjust.
‘Christ!’
‘Bad time for me,’ said Maki. ‘After baby born, people see he is gaijin child. Many not kind to me. Shout at me. Sometime throw things at me in street.’
‘Just now,’ he said, suddenly making sense of what he’d seen. The stallholder had been angry with her, brusque. ‘That man just now, he said something?’
‘
Hai
,’ she said. ‘But not matter. Happen all the time. Is nothing.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s
not
nothing! It’s bloody insufferable!’
The anger welled up in him. He moved as if to double back and find the stallholder. He would make him apologise, beat the bastard black and blue if he refused. But Maki put a hand on his arm, restrained him with the lightness of her touch, familiar after all this time.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It not help.’
He knew she was right. He unclenched his fists, tried to quell the useless rage. Her hand still rested on his arm; he took it a moment in his own.
*
They walked, along by the waterfront, spoke little in between the silences.
‘It’s cruel,’ he said. ‘Now Tsuru is my wife. We have a daughter, Hana.’
‘
So desu
.’
It was uncanny that he’d stayed late at his office, hammering out the agreement with the others, that he’d left at that time, taken the detour, wandered through the market, something he never did. And she had come in from the village to shop there, had also been later than usual. She would stay the night with her friend Yumi. Yumi too had left the Sakura, married one of her clients, a wealthy merchant from Kobe. When the husband was in Osaka or Edo on business, Maki could stay overnight.
‘Yumi understand,’ she said. ‘She is kind to me.’
The boy was tired, was starting to whimper. She picked him up, held and shooshed him.
The darkening night. The resignation in Maki’s eyes. The boy’s crying. The starkness, the sheer complexity of it all.
‘I need time,’ said Glover. ‘I need to think what to do.’
‘What to do,’ she echoed, and she smiled at him, wry and sad. ‘Maybe is nothing to do.’
He hailed a
jinrikisha
driver to take her to her friend’s house, gave her the little money he had in his wallet.
‘More tomorow,’ he said. ‘You come to my office. Same time.’
‘
Hai
,’ she said. ‘
So desu
. Tomorrow.’
He watched the rickshaw trundle into the night, turned home towards Ipponmatsu, to Tsuru and Hana.
*
Tsuru was calm, showed no emotion, said nothing as he explained the situation, just gave the slightest nod of the head.
‘I just want to do what’s best,’ he said.
‘
Hai
,’ she said. ‘Best.’
The day had been long. He was tired. He soaked in a hot tub, dried off, lay down. But his sleep was restless, fitful, twitching between waking and dream. He was in some kind of temple, looking for Maki, and everyone was giving him advice. Walsh was laughing.
Got yourself the mother of a dilemma here, Tom, with real
big horns!
He mimed being a pantomime devil, forefingers to the sides of his head, sticking out like horns, then they metamorphosed into real horns, sharp enough to gore and wound. Mackenzie was shaking his head.
Ach, Tom, daft loon! I told ye, I
told ye, to mind where ye dipped yer wick. And did ye listen? Did ye hell!
Then Ito was offering him a drink.
Drunk, I lie, head pillowed in
some beauty’s lap
. He leered.
Great man have many women! Ha!
Then the mask of his face changed, became serious.
But you marry Tsuru,
have duty
. He withdrew the drink he was offering, swigged it himself, laughed again as it slobbered down his chin, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Is koan, Guraba-san. Question to
answer. What to do?
And he clanged an iron bell that rang in Glover’s skull as he woke and sat up.