She smiled at my question. “The Master was born a few miles from here. He was, in fact, a distant relative of mine. And yes, Matsuo Bashō was ninja.”
Knife slices through wind,
Butterfly floats on a breath.
Sharpen my wings, please.
Poetry was, once I thought about it, not a bad cover for an Imperial espionage agent: who would suspect a shiftless, hard-drinking poet—a seventeenth-century bohemian—of acting as eyes and ears for the Son of Heaven? And it was not without parallel: Will Somers informed on Cardinal Wolsey under Henry VIII. Minstrels wandered anywhere, fools befriended anyone. Christopher Marlowe had almost certainly spied for his Crown, and I’d long suspected that Rudyard Kipling was writing autobiography when he penned, “Slip through his lines and learn—that is work for a spy!” Spies came in all flavours: poet, nurse, retired consulting detectives. Lady academics with an interest in the Hebrew Bible.
It did put a rather different light on some of Bashō’s more enigmatic phrases and imagery.
Asleep on horseback,
The distant moon in a dream,
Steam from cooking tea.
Was the poet describing a dream during a doze on his horse? Or was this some coded message regarding local landowners or troop movements? Perhaps, like Kipling, Bashō was a spy writing about a spy’s dreams …
I shook myself from the reverie, but before I could pursue the idea of a poet-spy, Haruki-san spoke up.
“There is another thing you need to know, and then I will return you to the bath-house for a massage, before dinner.”
“Just one thing?”
“My family are Samurai. Most Samurai serve daimyo; for three centuries, we have served the Emperor—or, in the case of our first patron, the Meisho Empress. How we came to serve Their Majesties is a story for another day, but serve them we have, thirteen men—now fourteen—and two women, since 1640. During the years my family performed as acrobats, we served the Emperor; when my father returned here to run the family onsen, he served the Emperor; while I was away being educated in America, I served the Emperor. To the world, we are just another rural family with nobility in our distant past. They see the Prince Regent coming to an onsen run by his favourite juggler, and think nothing of it. They see a village with rice paddies and tea fields and a restorative hot springs, and look no further.
“But we serve the Emperor. All of us, down to the smallest child. Any outsider who comes to the village is soon given reason to leave.”
A small, uneasy thought bubbled up to the front of my mind. Holmes and I were about as “outsider” as you could get. If we chose not to serve this Emperor-to-be, would we, too, be “given reason to leave”? And if so, would we depart on our feet, or in shrouds?
As if she had seen the question on my face and wished to divert me, Haruki-san gave us bows, then rose to her feet. “I hope you do not mind, I have instructed the maids to dress you in clothing proper for the evening, following your massage.”
“I’m not going to be strapped into one of those formal obis,” I warned her. “I’d like to breathe.” And eat.
She laughed. “I shall instruct your maid not to bind you too tightly.”
I might have worried more about the statement were it not for the attentions of the blind masseuse, who pummelled the aches from my tired body and replaced the binding around my ankle. When she had finished, I lay for a time, summoning the energy to raise my head and glare at the woman sitting patiently near the doorway with a heap of clothing.
There are many, many layers covering a Japanese woman, which goes far to explain the lack of heat in the houses. I doubt many women here managed without assistance, but I did not even try. I merely stood with my arms out and let the maid push me around and bundle me like a doll.
In the end, although yes, I did have the wide obi belt of a woman and yes, I submitted to a small decoration in my hair, I was at least permitted the truncated sleeves of the married woman rather than the ridiculously cumbersome wings of a young girl, and the colours were sombre enough that they wouldn’t set the dogs to barking.
I was, in truth, not entirely dissatisfied with the image in the mirror—until I saw Holmes.
If the paradigm of women’s clothing in Japan was the butterfly, that of men was the knife. Dark grey, crisp white, snug body, and loose around the extremities: he looked … dangerous.
“Oh, Holmes, that’s just not fair.”
The question was, I reflected later, had the garment come first, or the lack of furniture? Haruki-san’s shipboard lectures had laid the groundwork for my ongoing awareness of cultural interconnectedness, and now I was seeing it everywhere. Steam pipes and plumbing fixtures were impractical in a land where the earth was always shifting: therefore, light-weight building and portable fires. But flimsy walls and hibachi burners were inadequate for a cold country: therefore, many layers of clothing. The question then came, was kneeling the norm because of the building techniques, or because of the clothing? It was awkward enough to fold into a chair while wrapped in an obi, and it would be even more difficult when wearing a sword. So, now that men no longer stuck swords through their belts, would chairs gain transcendence? Would carpets replace tatami? Would the women adopt Flapper dress?
Such were the thoughts I used to take my mind off the fading sensation in my legs. The Western body is not accustomed to sitting with the backside tucked against the soles of the feet. We had been in position for twelve minutes, waiting for our dinner to appear, and the tingles were turning to actual pain. Experience had taught that the throb would soon die away and my legs would go numb, to stay that way until it was time to stand. That did not make this stage any easier.
I studied Haruki-san, demure beside me in a quiet brown kimono, her untouched cup of sake in her hands. She might have been carved from stone, and I was certain that she could sit motionless for hours. I was also certain that she could rise instantly into fluid motion, with no problem of dead feet.
The tiny fire burning in the sand-lined pit between us was hardly enough to warm a bird, but I was finding that the layers of cotton and silk did in fact keep the cold at bay.
Except for the nape of my neck. For some reason, all those garments did not manage to cover the back of one’s neck—on me, that is, and Haruki-san: Holmes’ garments came up to his hair-line. I made a mental note to look for a nice thick scarf in the next shops I came to.
Perhaps Japanese women were expected to demonstrate vulnerability at the expense of comfort? In my experience, such overt declarations were often designed to mislead. Which would suggest that the much-demonstrated fragility of the Japanese woman was but a front.
Some butterflies, I had heard, could be deadly.
This string of useless thoughts was broken with a tinkle of glass bottles outside the door, followed by a burr-slam of wood as the external door was thrown back in its tracks. A man lurched in—the gardener’s lame assistant, his worn blue clothing replaced with a motley collection of garments, including a green and black kimono with brown hakata pants and a sort of grey obi. From one meaty hand dangled a wooden bucket, of the kind used for everything from transporting fresh fish to scooping night soil from the benjo. I hoped this had not been used for that last purpose, because at the moment, it held bottles of beer.
The fellow appeared to have emptied a few of them along the way. He ignored the door he had flung open, and his progress across the spotless tatami was more of a stagger. I was just beginning to wonder why one of the maids had not intercepted him to take charge of the delivery, when his tabi-clad foot caught one edge of the tatami and he fell.
The beer bottles launched into the air in all directions, followed by the assistant gardener, who tumbled head over heels across the room. We all reacted fast to get out of the way of his flying heels—
And he came to a halt at the very edge of the fire-pit, controlled, perfectly balanced on one knee, a bottle in his right hand.
He looked from one to the next of t
he remaining three bottles, one in Holmes’ hand, one in Haruki-san’s, and the last in mine. His mouth twitched, then he threw back his head to laugh.
Thus we met our tutor’s father, the jester-assassin.
Bamboo softly bends
In the wind over the grove
But not soft on flesh.
The man sitting with his bottle of Sapporo looked like any of a thousand other Japanese men I had seen in the past week. Stocky, balding, perhaps a bit fitter than the suited men on the trains; perhaps with marginally deeper laugh-lines beside his eyes—nothing that betrayed his nature to a casual viewer.
But a non-casual viewer noticed how the intelligent eyes missed nothing, and how every motion was precisely calculated. Studying him across the fire-pit, I also perceived a faint discrepancy in the angle of his body, as if legs and torso were put together wrong.
He wasn’t lame, although the hitch in his gait was not entirely feigned. According to his daughter, a broken spine had ended the family tradition of acrobatics and turned him into an innkeeper. Looking at his face, I wondered just how much chronic pain he held at bay, day in and day out.
Had you told me the man was a professional entertainer forced to abandon his chosen life, I’d have seen that face alone: a pool of merriment over a rocky past.
On the other hand, if you’d told me this man was a professional assassin, I’d have seen that, too: a faint disappointment at the failures of the world, but no regret.
Because I knew—or at any rate, thought I knew—both sides to the man, I saw the two faces overlaid: a man with a long history of living a secret, who had long since reconciled himself to the state of his world.
His dramatic entrance had been immediately followed by a line of maids carrying small tables laden with food. An informal meal, there by the fire, but blessedly plentiful. To my dual pleasure, they arranged more coal on the fire to cook the skewered meats, and coincidentally to push back the night air.
Haruki-san had greeted her father by setting down the bottle she had snatched from mid-air and giving him dogeza, a low bow with both hands on the tatami. The smile he gave her was both loving and serene—and the thought came from nowhere that although the laughter of many Japanese, male or female, was an expression of discomfort, when this man laughed, he meant it.
Head still down, Haruki-san introduced us, then sat up. “My honourable father speaks English,” she told us, her eyes on the hands of the middle-aged maid arranging the plates.
“Like a child,” Sato-san added. “Good not to use big words.” His voice was calm, his accent clear. He handed his bottle to one of the maids. She held it over the fire-pit, gingerly popping free the cap. When the foam began to stay inside the bottle, she returned it to him, performing the same ritual with ours, then tucking the opener into the bucket.
“I imagine we will understand each other well enough,” Holmes said drily.
I’d been right about the laughter: Sato-san’s belly strained at the front of his kimono as he chuckled, like the laughing Buddhas in a curio shop.
“I think we will, yes,” he agreed. “As I think you want to know why you here. All the things my daughter could not tell you.” He glanced at Haruki-san.
The attendants finished, the oldest of them pausing to adjust the tray of rice rolls before Sato-san, then bowed their way out of the door, sliding it shut behind them.
“She has told you that ‘shinobi,’ or as you call it, ‘ninja,’ means hidden. We began as a tool of war, going to a place and not being seen, listening to talk and not being noticed. Silent, invisible. In the background, neh?
“And then the time of war ended, and all of Japan was under the Shogun. The West was locked out, Emperor embraced Shogun, peace fell. Sometimes uneasy, but for three hundred years, it held. Emperor, Shogun, daimyo, Samurai, and peasant, resting on each other’s shoulders.
“But the tools of peace can be used for war. Ninja know this, and practise other—” He paused to consult with his daughter, then resumed. “We practise alternative uses for sickles and garden knives and lengths of chain. The most useful tools are those that make no one look twice. Just as most useful ninja are those that look stupid but have big ears.”
We chuckled, having used this method of invisibility ourselves. He took a swallow of beer before going on.
“Samurai are proud; ninja not. Samurai treasure honour above all. Rather die than fail. Ninja happy to fail at one thing if the bigger job is a success. Sacrifice, neh? Honour, life, family—all second to getting the job done. We become office-workers and ticket-sellers, to understand the modern world. We even become entertainers. No one takes those seriously. We send our children to school in America, so they can walk unseen in the West. Many tools, ready to be used.”
Haruki-san had said she was being educated for the family business—meaning all aspects of the family business.
“Two hundred eighty-four years ago, the head of my family was honoured to have a—” He paused again to consult. “A private audience with Her Majesty the Meisho Empress. My ancestor had been fortunate enough to overhear a plot against Her Majesty and take it to her advisors. They offered a reward, but my ancestor said he wished only one thing: a private audience with Her Majesty. Five minutes only. Everyone most surprised when Her Majesty, instead of having his head, laughed. Then granted his wish. The only other person present was a deaf bodyguard.
“My ancestor bowed to Empress. He thank her for the honour she was doing to his entire line. And he tell her that if ever she or one of her descendants needed a man who could pass unseen and hear whispered secrets, she, or they, had only to send word.
“I do not suppose he thought anything would come of it. Like an elephant and an ant, Emperors are far too powerful to require the services of a small and unimportant clan of Samurai.
“But the Empress did remember. And somehow, she passed the word to her son, and he to his, that there is a family in Mojiro-joku waiting to serve. A family that looks near to peasants, but has useful skills. Perhaps once a generation, in the three centuries since then, a quiet message has been received, and a Sato is honoured to do a task for a Son—or Daughter—of Heaven.
“It is, for us, what you might call a sacred promise, that we might be there when needed. Not only be there, but be able. We train, that when we are called upon, we may serve.”
His broad face broke into a grin. “Crazy, neh? Three hundred years we play with our thumbs and wait for a message that may never come? On to now, a time of telephones and cameras and aeroplanes?”
He allowed silence to fall, so we could think about what he had told us. The charcoal in the fire whispered. Voices came from outside. Holmes stirred.
“It is not only your family, is it?”
“Our family is broad,” Sato-san replied.
“With ears in many places. Such as Bombay.”
“Some ears are family. Others are paid for. The English are not always as … circumspect, is that the word?”
“Yes.”
“—as circumspect as their superiors might wish. So.” He drained the last of his beer, and put the bottle down by his knee. “One winter day last year, message comes. His Highness the Prince Regent will visit my humble onsen. I first met His Highness many year ago, when he was a child. Five, maybe six. I was called to perform at a festival for Meiji Emperor, and Prince Hirohito there, he laugh at my tricks. After my accident, Meiji Emperor help—send doctors, little gifts. Four years later, Meiji Emperor die. His Majesty become Emperor, but little Prince still remember his grandfather’s acrobat, old man with funny tricks. Prince grow up, send little gifts, too, even come here, two, three times. To see tricks—old man can still juggle, but you guess that, I think, neh?—but also likes waters. And talk. Hard for Son of Heaven to find someone just for talk.
“So. Message come last winter from Prince Regent, want to come for the baths. Roads bad, cold and rain, but he coming, so we fast-fast buy new tatami and beds. He take bath, have massage, eat m
y simple foods. Walk through hills. And on second morning, His Highness send for me. When he told guards to leave, I knew what was coming.
“Yes: he need my help. There was a book, very pretty, of poems and pictures. His Highness took it to the King of England as a gift. One crown to another, neh? Was in His Majesty’s private rooms, I guess. No one notice it gone, the Palace so full of beautiful things.
“But now—this is …” He paused to consult with his daughter.
“November.”
“November, last year. His Majesty get letters, many letters, but His Majesty not well, and His Highness doing more and more answers of letters. So here is one, it say, ‘Your Honoured Majesty, I have come into possession of a book of poetry by Matsuo Bashō, containing hidden truths, which I am offering to sell to you for so many English pounds.’ More words, but that is sense of it. His Highness first thinks, I must write the King of England and tell him someone has stolen his book. But then he see that ‘hidden truths.’ He wonder about that, and think, Maybe I go to my Honourable Father and ask if something I not know about this pretty book. His Majesty not well, you know this? Last four-five year, he has no official duties?”
Holmes and I assured him that we were aware of the erratic behaviour of the Emperor of Japan, who had once famously stood before the Japanese parliament, rolled up his speech, and held it to his eye like a spyglass. “England, too, has had rulers who were … unwell,” Holmes said.
“This just short time after earthquake. Two, three month, neh? Important that His Highness be in Tokyo, helping hard. It take some time before he can get free to see His Majesty. And when he does, His Majesty ill. So His Highness think, I cannot ask my Honourable Father a thing that will disturb him. Instead, he talk, about this and about that. Childhood, neh? And he say, ‘We have so many beautiful things, so lucky to have. I remember one book, poems and pictures, in a case. Was anything very special about that book?’