Runaway Horses Page 8

  Tomo Noguchi, because telegraph lines were something brought from abroad, refused to walk beneath them. (The telegraph system was established in Meiji 6.) When Noguchi made his daily pilgrimage to the shrine dedicated to Lord Kiyomasa, he took special care not to pass under any telegraph lines, even though this meant taking a roundabout way. If he found it impossible to avoid them, he passed beneath while shielding his head with a white fan.

  It was the custom of these young men to carry salt in a pocket of their sleeve, and scatter it about to purify themselves if they met a Buddhist priest, a man dressed in Western style, or a funeral procession. Herein may be seen the influence of the famous work The Jeweled Sash of Atsutané Hirata, which even Masahiko Fukuoka, foremost of the group in his contempt for books, had read with appreciation.

  Again, Saburo Tominaga once went to the Shirakawa Prefectural Office to cash his brother Morikuni’s bonus bond and, unwilling to touch paper currency defiled with a foreign-style design, carried it home between chopsticks.

  Master Oen was fond of the uncouth vigor of these young men. Most of them did not take to refinement. They loved the moon shining on the banks of the Shirakawa with the love of men who believed that it was the last harvest moon they would see in this life. They prized the cherry blossoms like men for whom this spring’s blossoms were the last that would ever bloom. And so they would sing together the song of Ichigoro Hasuda, the patriotic samurai of Mito:

  I look upon the moon

  Beyond my upright spear,

  Wondering when its rays

  Will fall upon my corpse.

  According to Master Oen’s teaching, in the world hidden from men there is neither life nor death. The life and death of this world about us took its origin from the Ukei of the gods Izanagi and Izanami. Since men are the offspring of the gods, however, if they preserve themselves from all polluting transgression and, upright, just, and pure of heart, worship in the ancient manner, they can put off the death and corruption of this world and ascend to heaven to become one with the gods.

  Master Oen was wont to recite this poem:

  As the white swan soars to heaven,

  Leave no traces here below.

  In February of Meiji 7, the Saga Rebellion broke out, the rebellious forces having been raised by those who had cast their lot with the supporters of the Subdue Korea Policy. To aid in its suppression, government forces were dispatched from various encampments, including Kumamoto. And thus, for the moment, the troops left guarding the castle numbered a mere two hundred. Otaguro deemed it improper to let such an opportunity slip by.

  In Otaguro’s mind a strategy for sweeping away misrule had already taken form. To unseat corrupt advisors and enhance the grandeur of the Imperial Throne, there was no better way to begin than by raising a force of loyal men and seizing the camps at Kumamoto. With this stronghold as a focal point, a number of like-hearted men could be rallied to the cause from both east and west, and a vast force could be put together for an advance to the east. The first step was the seizure of the Kumamoto camps. It was a time when the enemy had become extraordinarily vulnerable, and it behooved Otaguro and his comrades to turn this to their advantage.

  Thus it was that Otaguro once more consulted the will of the gods through the Ukei rite. Again, after fasting for a number of days he made his way reverently into the Divine Presence, and, raising the branch adorned with the sacred pendants, executed the rite of Ukei with a devout heart.

  This time the darkness was not filled with the heat of mid-summer. The chill of early spring held possession of the sanctuary. Then, too, it was just before dawn, and from the rear of the priest’s house could be heard the crowing of roosters. Their cries seemed to shatter the darkness like streaks of crimson lightning. They were rending cries, as if the dark throat of night had been burst asunder and was spurting blood.

  The sage Atsutané Hirata talked endlessly of the pollution caused by death, but, as to blood pollution, he mentioned only the loss of a trivial amount of blood. Now there took form in Otaguro’s mind, here before the gods, the image of pure, seething blood. As his thoughts dwelt upon this blood which was to purify the Imperial Court, he felt that the gods would not take offense. There flashed through Otaguro’s prayerful entreaty terrible phantasms: glinting swords cutting down the wicked, blood spilling out on every side. And beyond the blood, what was pure, just, and honest took form, like the blue line of the distant sea.

  The candles burning before the Divine Presence flickered in the dawn breeze. As Otaguro began to wave the branch with its sacred pendants, the candles guttered and nearly went out.

  The eyes of the gods were fixed upon him. They evaluated the doings of men by a standard of their own, a standard beyond human knowledge. Alone able to foresee all consequences, only the gods could sanction or forbid.

  Otaguro picked up the wad of paper that the pendants had caught. He opened it and read it by the candlelight. The words “not propitious” met his eye.

  The patriotic samurai of the League of the Divine Wind were not unreasonably stiff men to whom the usual human emotions were foreign. Each of them yearned with all his heart to prove himself upon the field of combat, but otherwise they were simply vigorous young men.

  Haruhiko Numazawa had unusual strength and excelled in wrestling. One day when he was pounding rice outside his door, a sudden shower began to fall. He immediately picked up both mortar and pestle, carried them indoors, and set calmly to work once more.

  Hironobu Saruwatari had a two-year-old daughter named Umeko, upon whom he lavished his affection. One night, coming home somewhat drunk, he placed a large saké bottle in the arms of the sleeping girl and cried out: “Look, a melon! A melon!” Umeko loved melons. Still half-asleep, she began to caress the bottle. But when his wife Kazuko laughingly remarked: “You keep saying ‘Don’t lie even to a child’—how can you do such a thing?” Saruwatari was stricken with remorse. He went out and searched until he was able to buy an out-of-season melon, which he brought home and gave to Umeko.

  Kisou Onimaru, along with Gensai Kawakami and his companions, had once been committed to prison for a year for a political offense. He loved saké dearly, and throughout his sentence his friends regularly brought bean curd steeped in saké. On New Year’s Day they carried a large box of it to the prison, having on this occasion emptied three bottles of saké into the bean curd. When the warders called attention to the powerful aroma, Onimaru satisfied them with the explanation that the bean curd had been simmered in saké.

  Gitaro Tashiro was a devoted son. Since the doctor had told his father to eat beef, which the League shunned, Gitaro went each day to the slaughterhouse at Kamikawara to buy beef for him. However, in the summer that the patriotic force was raised, when his father arranged a match without consulting him and urged him to marry, Gitaro refused again and again with tears in his eyes. He had already resolved to die.

  Tomo Noguchi was a man of inborn integrity, not fond of books but devoted to martial skills, especially archery from horseback. Each spring and fall at the festival of military arts held in the gardens of the Lord of Kumamoto, he drew his bow with unerring accuracy. Then, too, he was not one to forget a promise. Once a friend happened to complain that all year long he had been unable to find any radishes for pickles. Late that very night Noguchi and his brother came to this man’s gate carrying on their shoulders a huge barrel of fragrant pickled radishes.

  In the summer of Meiji 7, the governor, Nagasuké Yasuoka, appointed various members of the League of the Divine Wind to shrines of greater and lesser importance throughout the prefecture. Tomo Otaguro was of course appointed chief priest of the Imperial Shrine at Shingai, with Mitsuo Noguchi and Wahei Iida as his assistant priests. Yasuoka designated Harukata Kaya as chief priest of Kinzan Shrine and Yasuhisa Koba, Tateki Ura, and Chuji Kodama as his assistants. In this manner the comrades of the League came to have custody of some fifteen shrines in all. Besides the beneficial effect that their fervent zeal had upon the gene
ral piety, shrines in every part of the province became main or subordinate bases of operations for the League.

  All this had the result of strengthening the dedication of the men of the League. The more they revered the gods, the more anxious they were over the state of national affairs. As time passed, they grew ever more resentful at seeing those in authority draw the nation further and further from Master Oen’s ideal of a land in which the gods would once more be worshipped as of old.

  In Meiji 9 they suffered a crushing blow to their aspirations. On the eighteenth of March, the governor promulgated the Edict Against Wearing Swords, which was followed soon after by an edict forbidding the traditional samurai hair style. Yasuoka stringently enforced both of these.

  Otaguro, in order to restrain the violent indignation of the League’s young men, instructed them that the decree against wearing swords could be circumvented by going about with one’s sword concealed in a bag. But this did not suffice to stem their anger. Together, the young men came to Otaguro and demanded to know when they would be permitted to sacrifice their lives.

  If their swords were snatched from them, what means would be left to guard the honor of the gods they revered? Each of them was determined, whatever the odds, to fight to the death in the Divine Cause. To worship the gods, the sacrosanct Divine Ritual was the essential means. Thus if this sword were torn away from them, it was inevitable that the gods of Japan, so utterly disdained by the new government, would become powerless spirits, worshipped only by the ignorant masses.

  Meanwhile, month after month, year after year, the gods Master Oen had said were so close at hand, the gods who had enflamed their hearts with such devotion, were being degraded. The young men felt certain that a conspiracy was afoot to rob the gods of their dignity, to thrust them off into the distance, to make them as insignificant as possible. Thus, out of fear that the Christian West might look upon Japan as an ignorant, heathen land, the ideal of worship and government as one would be slighted more and more. The gods would finally sink to the level of feeble spirits, ephemeral beings who clung to life in the shelter of sprouting reeds rippling in the wind beside remote streams.

  And the sword was to suffer a like fate. The defense of the land would no longer be entrusted to the manly warrior bearing at his side the swift thunderbolt of the immortal gods. The national army created by Aritomo Yamagata gave no preference to the samurai class, nor did it honor the ideal of the Japanese as individuals rallying spontaneously to the defense of their native land. Rather, it was a Western-style professional army which, in ruthless disregard of all tradition, ignored class distinctions and depended upon a draft system to supply its manpower. The Japanese sword, giving way to the saber, had lost its soul. Now it was fated to become a mere decoration, an ornament.

  It was at this time that Harukata Kaya resigned his priestly office at Kinzan Shrine and presented a formal petition of several thousand words concerning the wearing of swords to the prefectural governor. This was a superb composition in praise of the Japanese sword, and Kaya’s heart’s blood had nourished every word. To it he later added a preamble, intending to present the revised document to the highest authorities in Tokyo:

  A Petition Concerning the Proclamation of the Edict

  Prohibiting the Wearing of Swords

  I, Harukata, a lowly subject, holder of no office, though at the hazard of my own life, hereby submit with utmost humility a statement to the honorable members of the Council of Elders.

  Edict Number Thirty-eight, issued from the office of the Prime Minister in March of this year, prohibits the wearing of swords by any citizen except military police and government officers in full-dress uniforms, as prescribed by regulations. With all due respect, I must point out that such a proclamation is not in accord with the unique national character of our glorious land, unchanged since the time of the Emperor Jimmu.

  The intensity of my patriotic zeal forbade my keeping an awestruck silence and clinging stealthily to my office. Thus on April 21 I submitted to the governor of Kumamoto a detailed protest, in much the same terms as below, and also requested that he promptly relieve me of every main and subsidiary duty pertaining to my office. On June 7, however, this memorial was sent back to me on the grounds that a prefectural office could not concern itself with the matter therein since it was urged in opposition to the law of the land.

  Alas, an untutored rustic such as I cannot cope with the formalities of an advanced civilization! I realize that my expression is crude, and that I am unable to marshal my thoughts adequately, and this has for some time given me pause. Nevertheless, the spirit of dogged devotion and humble loyalty ever surges up within me, and I can no longer hold back. Thus do I dare, in all humility, to present my arguments once more.

  In this preamble we see the full measure of Harukata’s longstifled rage and anguish, and of his irrepressible “dogged devotion” and “humble loyalty.”

  In my view, the bearing of swords is a custom that characterized our Land of Jimmu even in the ancient era of the gods. It is intimately bound up with the origins of our nation, it enhances the dignity of the Imperial Throne, solemnizes the rites of our gods, banishes the spirits of evil, puts down disorders. The sword, therefore, not only maintains the tranquility of the nation but also guards the safety of the individual citizen. Indeed, the one thing essential to this martial nation that reveres the gods, the one thing never to be put aside even for an instant, is the sword. How, then, could those upon whom is laid the burden of fashioning and promulgating a national policy that honors the gods and strengthens our land be so forgetful of the sword?

  Thus did Harukata, drawing from sundry sources, attest ample proof of the importance of the sword in the history of Japan from the time of the early chronicles, and of the significance of its role in exalting the Japanese Spirit. And he went on to explain how the wearing of a sword by people of all ranks was a custom that fulfilled the divinely inspired precepts of Japan’s ancient rulers.

  A recent rumor in the town would have it that this edict prohibiting the wearing of swords was recommended by the supreme commander of the Army, it being alleged that it would be a matter of grave consequence to the authority of the military if those outside its scope were permitted to bear swords. After much thought, I have come to the conclusion that such an outrageous statement could not have issued from an Army commander but was rather the fabrication of street-corner idlers.

  Those who guide the Army are the fangs and claws of the Imperial Throne and the very salvation of the Land of the Gods. To their benevolence, their authority, their magnanimity, their severity the populace must ever give respectful heed. Thus, with all those in military service as the winged limbs of their commanders, even if the whole people of the Divine Emperor should go about with swords and spears throughout the land, this would but magnify the power of the Army, strengthen national policy, and temper the nation for the shocks of greater and lesser trials. How could it possibly obstruct the workings of government? For it would manifest the glory of a land where the splendor of arms is abundantly nourished. . . .

  In the light of all this, I cannot forebear to observe that never has the honor of the Land of Jimmu fallen so low as in these present times. How could any citizen, in the least eager to serve the nation, pass his days in idle pursuits, heedless of national policy, and not bend his efforts to aid in promoting good and suppressing evil? Now is the time for those loyal subjects close to the Throne, the men who are the Emperor’s claws and fangs, to ponder deeply, to agonize, to labor unremittingly. . . .

  This edict is in opposition to the Imperial Decree on the Abolition of Clans and the Establishment of Prefectures, and turns its back on the understanding of duty, the search for justice, the preservation of domestic tranquility, and the defense of the nation against foreign incursion. Thus it contradicts the Imperial Will. Beyond doubt it would speedily verify the proverb that a nation must ravage itself before foreigners can ravage it, a man must despise himself before other
s can despise him.

  As stated in the preamble, Kaya’s original petition had been returned from the governor’s office without acknowledgment. He had supplemented it and put it in suitable form, having resolved to go alone to Tokyo, present it to the Council of Elders, and disembowel himself on the spot. Thus he was far from eager to join his comrades in armed resistance.

  Meanwhile Otaguro had been holding in check the hot-blooded youths who came to him protesting: “The warrior bereft of his sword is wretched. When, Master, will you give us an opportunity to lay down our lives?” But at last he assembled the seven leaders of the League at the shrine in Shingai. These were Morikuni Tominaga, Masahiko Fukuoka, Kageki Abé, Unshiro Ishihara, Kotaro Ogata, Juro Furuta, and Tsunetaro Kobayashi. The plan that they devised was as follows: since their comrades in other parts of the land seemed to lack the courage to set matters in motion, they themselves would strike the first blow in the righteous cause by cutting down every major military and civilian official in the prefecture and seizing the camps at Kumamoto. Placing as they did the deepest trust in Otaguro, the whole group then waited as, at their bidding, he left them to consult the gods for a third time through an Ukei.

  It was late on a May night in the Ninth Year of Meiji, with all gathered together at the imperial shrine in Shingai.

  Otaguro, having purified himself, entered the sanctuary.

  The seven leaders sat in a row in the fore-hall of the shrine, waiting to hear the will of the gods.

  When Otaguro clapped his hands, the sound echoed loudly from within the sanctuary.

  Otaguro’s hands were large, though emaciated, and the sharp report of their clapping was as if the palms, like hollowed, rough-hewn cedar planks, had entrapped pure atmosphere, and crushed it with an explosive burst of divinity.