Lotus & Other Tales of Medieval Japan Read online

  Summoning them, he began, "I hear you two are from Shinobu, but what are your names?"

  "We are from the village of Shinobu in Date County. We left our home on the eighteenth day of the third month together with our mother; but at Naoi port in Echigo, we were tricked by a wicked man who took us from our mother and sold us to slave-traders. We have no particular names, master, so please call us whatever you like."

  The truth was that Anju did not want these fellows to call her and her brother by their real names.

  Sansho replied as if in the best of moods: "Country bumpkins like you two could hardly be expected to have proper names, I suppose. Anyway, I'll give you some nice ones. You, girl, can be 'Shinobu' (endurance), after your village. And your brother we'll call 'Wasuregusa' (grass of forgetfulness). Be sure you forget everything else and just devote yourself to my service! From tomorrow on, Shinobu will go to the seashore and draw water from the sea. Wasuregusa will cut firewood—three shoulder-pole-loads a day. Around four tomorrow morning, give the boy a sickle and shoulder-pole and the girl a bucket and ladle."

  Early next morning, Zushiō took his sickle and shoulder-pole and went to the mountains, while Anju went to the seashore with her bucket and ladle. At home, they had been surrounded by servants and had never themselves held anything heavier than chopsticks and a rice bowl. Even so, Zushiō did his best to cut firewood with his sickle. But the wood was too hard, and he could hardly cut one piece, much less three shoulder-loads. As he worked away, the sickle-blade broke and he cut his fingers badly. The boy wept with chagrin. Then he thought of his sister, who must be enduring the same sort of hardships. "It doesn't matter about me, but my poor, poor sister! How can she draw water from the sea, in the cold and with the winds and the waves? I bet she's already lost her bucket and ladle to the waves by now." He broke down and wept, not so much for himself as for his sister. Just then some mountain-folk came by and asked him why he was crying. When the boy told them the reason, they exclaimed, "Poor little lad! He must be from a good family, and this mountain work is too much for him." Then they quickly cut some brushwood and bound it into three shoulder-loads for him.

  Anju too, though she went as ordered to the seashore, kept floundering in the high waves and was not able to fill her bucket at all. She was at her wits' end and, doubly grieved at the thought of what Zushiō must be enduring in the mountains, wept bitter tears. Some diving-women came by and saw her. "It's too much to ask a young lady like her to draw water from the sea," they said, and did it for her.

  When evening came, Zushiō returned with three shoulder-loads of firewood and Anju with her quota of sea-water. "Just look at the firewood this brat has cut!" exclaimed Saburō, Sansho's third son. "He said he'd never done it before, but this is a perfect job—the ends are all nice and even. It's an expert's work. Since you're so good at it, brat, you'd better bring back ten loads tomorrow, not just three!"

  Then he issued orders to the sea-folk and mountain-folk not to help the new slave-children cut brushwood or draw water, under threat of dire punishment. The local people, seeing the order, thought Saburō a cruel devil of a man, but what could they do? The next morning the sister and brother went to work as on the day before, but this time the sea-folk and mountain-folk passed them by: "We'd really like to help you, but it's forbidden by order of that cruel Saburō."

  Zushiō was in despair and thought there was nothing for him to do but die. But if he had to die, he wanted to die together with his sister; and so he went to the seashore. Anju too had been thinking that the only solution for her was death, so she greeted her brother joyfully. The two of them filled their sleeves with pebbles and, taking each other by the hand, climbed up on to a large rock. "Look on me as the mother you were parted from at Naoi in Echigo, and I will look on you as the father who was exiled to Anraku-ji in Tsukushi," Anju said. Each gazed at the other as if seeing his mother or her father. They were about to leap from the rock together when suddenly they heard a loud voice from below.

  "Don't die—you mustn't! You have a mother and father. Think how they'll grieve if they hear of your deaths. If you live, there'll surely come a day when you'll see your dear parents again."

  Startled, they looked down and saw "Kohagi from Ise," a girl about five years older than Anju who was, like them, a slave of Sansho Dayūs. She climbed quickly on to the rock and, putting an arm around each of them, pulled them back to safety and sat them down.

  "You may think you are the two unhappiest people in the world, but you know, there are people much worse off than you—and I'm one of them. I was raised in Uda, in Yamato province, and though our family was not as well off as yours, we had everything we needed. But my mother died, and my step-mother came. She tricked me and sold me to a slave-dealer, and that's how I came to be here. You're still children, but I'm not, and I've experienced every kind of abuse a woman can be put through. In my misery, I decided to put a mark on this staff every time I was sold, and now there are forty-two marks. In these last five years, I've tasted every suffering there is and endured every humiliation. But I'm still alive, and I've become a stronger woman because of it all. Now there's no suffering I can't bear, and no humiliation I can't endure. In fact, I've learned to find a joy in bearing everything. So, compared to the pains and humili ations I've suffered, yours are very light. In a sense, you were too blessed before, too fortunate. Your earlier happiness makes what you have to go through now all the harder to bear. But I'll teach you how to cut firewood and draw water. And, what's more, I'll teach you how to deal with Sansho Dayū and Master Saburō. You can look on me as an older sister. This older sister may not be able to do much, but at least she's learned a lot about putting up with troubles and humiliations. I want to help you learn how to endure your fate." Kohagi wept as she spoke, seeing in the two children an image of herself five years earlier, when she'd known nothing of the trials of life. Remembering herself back then, she wept and resolved to protect these two little ones as much as she could. Anju and Zushiō rejoiced at this unexpected appearance of an "elder sister," and the three of them hugged one another happily.

  The children were still not very good at their tasks of cutting brushwood and drawing water; but, thanks to Kohagi's cleverness, they were able to get through each day without incurring the wrath of Sansho Dayū and Saburō. At last, New Year's Eve came round. Sansho Dayū called his son to him and said, "I can't stand the sour looks of those two. Just looking at their gloomy mugs puts me off my food. It's New Year's, and lots of people will be coming to offer good wishes: the god of good fortune should be coming along too! But one look at those two, and our guests will start feeling gloomy themselves, and the god of good fortune will up and run away. So send them off somewhere."

  "It's just as you say, Father. Shall I pack them off to the usual place?"

  "Yes, why not?" said Sansho Dayū.

  "The usual place" was a hut beside one of the side gates to their residence. It was an old-fashioned taboo-hut, where women who were thought to be impure due to childbirth or menstruation were kept apart from everyone else. Sansho Dayū used it as a kind of prison for slaves who had committed a fault of some sort. But what a shock it was to this young, innocent pair to be made to spend the festive New Year season in such a place of defilement! The previous New Year's they were living comfortably in a large mansion in Shinobu (though without their father), enjoying games of backgammon and battledore-and-shuttlecock. How different their present state was! More than the cold and the hunger, the children found the humiliation hard to bear. Finally, Anju said to her brother, "You should run away, Zushiō. Get away from here as soon as possible and go to the capital."

  "How can I run away? It's impossible."

  "If you go down the other side of the mountain where you cut firewood, there's a road that leads straight to the capital, they say. You should run away. You mustn't stay on in a place like this forever."

  "You're the one who should run away, Anju. Or, why don't we run away together?"

>   "It'd be dangerous for the two of us to try it. What one can do, sometimes two cannot. I'd be a drag on you in all sorts of ways, being a woman. Besides, a woman can't restore the fortunes of our family. You must show the paper you have to the Court in Kyoto. And when you succeed in the world, please come back for me."

  This debate as to who should be the one to run way was overheard by none other than Saburō, who happened to be passing by the taboo-hut at the time. "Those two brats are planning to run off somewhere," he reported to his father, who at once ordered them brought before him: "What's this talk I hear about you two running away?" he said in a fury. "How dare you, after I've been so good to you? You're returning evil for good, you are! I paid thirteen kan for you, and you've worked off a thousandth of that at best. And yet you plan to run off. Well, I won't have it! I'll put my mark on your faces so everyone'll know you're my slaves for good, and there'll be no more talk of running away. Get everything ready, Saburō."

  Saburō made a fire and heated a branding-iron with the "Yama" mark on it. Then he grabbed Anju by her long hair and wound it around his fist: "How about it, Shinobu? I'm going to brand that pretty little cheek of yours to show you belong to Sansho Dayū!"

  "No, no, you mustn't!" cried Zushiō. "If you brand my sister on her face, it'll be your loss too. Now you can be proud of having such a beautiful slave, but if you brand her, you'll ruin everything. So leave her alone, and put two brands on my face instead!"

  But the merciless Saburō applied the hot brand to Anju's left cheek. Zushiō was so terrified at the sight that he tried to run away, but Saburō caught him by the hand. "You're just a brat, for all your fine words. Let's put our brand on your cheek too!"

  "Please don't do that to Zushiō," cried Anju. "It'd be terrible for the family heir to have a mark on his face. A scar on the forehead might mean he'd fought with honor, but this kind of scar is pure shame. I don't care if you brand me again, but leave Zushiō alone, please!"

  "No. Both of you need branding," Saburō said roughly as he applied the "Yama" branding-iron to the terrified little boy's left cheek. Nearby there was a hollowed-out pine-tree trunk that was used as a bathtub. Saburō turned it over and shoved the two children under it, giving orders that no food be given them—that they be left to starve.

  Anju and Zushiō, cooped up in their crude little prison, no longer had the energy even to speak; they simply clung to one another and wept bitterly. Late that night, however, they had a secret visitor—Kohagi. She had smuggled some food in to give them: "I couldn't do anything to help you today, and now look what's happened! Forgive me. This food is from master Jiro, Sansho Dayū's second son. He feels sorry for you and saved his own dinner for me to give you. So, here: this is from him, and this is from me."

  The food Kohagi brought was of a sort the children were never given to eat: sea-bream sashimi, boiled shrimps, and the like. And it had hardly been touched.

  "Master Jiro left all this for us?..." They felt grateful for his kindness.

  "There are good people in this world," said Kohagi. "You sometimes find a buddha right in among the devils. So you mustn't despair. I'll keep sneaking in food for you from Master Jiro, and from me too." Having made this promise, she left.

  The New Year's festivities were well over when, on the sixteenth of the First Month, Sansho Dayū called Saburō to him: "They're probably dead by now, but go check to make sure." When he got to the pine-tree bathtub, Saburō found that, though they looked ill, with muddy complexions, the children were still alive. Surprised, he reported back to his father.

  "Somebody was probably feeding them on the sly," said Sansho. "But never mind. Since they're still alive, set them to work tomorrow morning." So Saburō ordered the children to start drawing water and cutting firewood again beginning the next day.

  But Anju spoke up: "Master Saburō, I have a request. Zushiō is still too weak to work on his own. Please send me to the mountain along with him." For once Saburō gave her a smile as he answered, "All right. You can go to the mountain too." Anju was very happy; but then suddenly he grabbed her by the hair: "If you're going to the mountain, we'll have to make a man of you. You don't need this long woman's hair—cut it off. No, wait—I'll do it for you." And he roughly cut off Anju's hair with his dirk. Poor Anju stood there with her crudely cropped head while Saburō's attendants burst out laughing. "Look at this monster here! The head's male, the body's female, and it's even got a brandmark burned into its face, like some horse or ox. It's a monster, a real monster!" said one of them, doing an imitation of a monster. The onlookers burst into even louder laughter then.

  And so the brother and sister went off to the mountain, followed by the mocking laughter of Saburō and his cronies. They did not stop at the place where Zushiō usually cut brushwood, though, but went on to the very top of the mountain, where they sat down on a rock. Anju took the image of the Bodhisattva Jizo from around her neck and addressed it: "You're supposed to be our guardian, dear Jizo, and yet you haven't helped us at all. You didn't do a thing when we were sold into slavery and when our faces were branded. Do you think you deserve to be called our guardian? If you really are our guardian saint, please take better care of us from now on!" She bowed to the image and had Zushiō do the same. When they had finished paying reverence to Jizo, they glanced at one another, and then both cried out at the same time: "The mark on your face—it's gone!" Truly, the bodhisattva had worked a miracle for them, no doubt feeling that not to do so now would be to fail completely in his role as guardian saint.

  When she saw that the terrible mark was gone from her brother's cheek, Anju said, "This is a sign from Jizo that you should run away. Go down the other side of the mountain, then find a village, and go to the temple. Hurry!" She took the holy image and placed it around Zushiō's neck.

  "But what about you?..." Zushiō hesitated, worrying about what terrible things Sansho might do to Anju if she stayed behind.

  "You don't have to worry about me. They'd never kill a woman," she said with a laugh. When she saw Zushiō was still hesitant, she started to walk briskly back the way they had come.

  "All right then, I'll go. I'll go to the capital. But come back up here for a moment so we can say goodbye before I go."

  Anju came back, and brother and sister shared a parting cup. Of course there was no sake, and no cup either; but they scooped up water from a mountain stream with a cup made from the leaf of a dwarf-bamboo, and shared that. Then Anju gave her brother a pat on the shoulder and sent him off: "So this is goodbye for now." Zushiō, his resistance overcome by his sister's firmness, moved off reluctantly down the other side of the mountain. Anju watched until he disappeared from view and then cut some brushwood for form's sake and started back. When she arrived at Sansho's house, he at once demanded to know what had happened to Wasuregusa.

  "We got separated when we were cutting brushwood on the mountain. I'm sure he'll be coming back soon on his own."

  "You're lying. I can tell from the look on your face. You've helped him to run away." Sansho angrily ordered Saburō to punish her.

  "You're asking for it, you little bitch," Saburō said with a cruel smile. He tortured her with fire and then with water. Anju broke down and wept from the pain, but Saburō just tortured her the more. "Look at you, you're crying! They say there's five kinds of tears—tears of sadness, tears of rage, tears of resentment, tears of happiness, and crocodile tears. I bet you're crying from happiness at having helped Wasuregusa get away. Or maybe they're crocodile tears that you think'll get you off lightly. But it won't work! Now talk! Where did he go?"

  I'll talk, I'll talk. Please stop, please!"

  "So you're going to talk, eh? You stubborn bitch."

  When the torture stopped, Anju said, "I'm sure he'll be right back. When you see him, tell him his sister died without saying anything."

  Saburō became even more enraged at these words and applied still more painful tortures to the girl. "What the hell is this, bitch? You don't answer my questions
, and say whatever you feel like?" Finally the pain grew unbearable, and Anju stopped breathing.

  "Stubborn bitch!" said Sansho Dayū. "We took such good care of her to make sure she'd talk, and then she dies on us. A weakling, for all her big talk! Anyway, Wasuregusa can't have gotten far. Let's go after him." So, leaving Anju's body where it lay, he and his followers went in pursuit of the boy.

  Zushiō had done just as his sister had told him: he went down the mountain to a nearby village and sought help at the local temple. It was an old temple called Kokubun-ji, which is now in ruins; but at the time there was a priest living there. When Zushiō broke in on his solitude, he was performing a sacred fire ritual.

  "I'm being pursued by Sansho Dayū. Please help me."

  The priest was aware of Sansho's reputation for greed and cruelty and quickly guessed what had happened. He took an old leather basket from a closet and put the little boy inside. Then he tied it with many cords, from top to bottom and side to side, put a net around it, and hung it from one of the roof beams. Having done all this, he resumed the fire ritual as if nothing had interrupted him. Soon there was the sound of loud voices, and Sansho Dayū's party rushed into the room.

  "Hey, priest, did a servant come in here just now?" demanded Saburō.

  "What? You say you want a service said? Well, I'm always pleased to say a service for the pious—and I do so appreciate the luncheon people give me afterwards! There haven't been many good luncheons lately, and I'm quite famished. Yes, I'd be delighted to say a service."

  "Not a service, you old fool! I'm asking if a slave has gotten in here!"