Chapter 17 - Shinkansen

Shige hadn't left Ibaraki Prefecture in decades. She'd only been conscious for about 4 months in the last three years, but even so, she had never been one to visit far off places. Home was where the heart was, she thought, besides, after yours teens and twenties, all these tourist spots seemed much the same.

Kyoto was different, of course. It was one of the few places in Japan where every street was dripping with history, architecture and myth. It had been spared from fire bombing by some unusuallly thoughtful and culturally sensitive Allied commanders during the Great Pacific War, or World War Two as the Westerners called it. Like much of Japan, it had nearly been destroyed in the post-war rush to modernise and emulate everything coming out of the USA and Western Europe in the 1950s and 60s - it still bore the scars of such "modernisation", but these could be forgiven or overlooked. The old temples and shrines remained. The forested hills remained. The little quiet taverns leaning over the rivers and streams remained. And the historical arts were still alive. Whether music or theatre, poetry or painting, Kyoto still was the heart of Japan's artistic world.

Kat and the whole family surprised Shige with the trip. They hadn't been anywhere, all 4 generations together, since that weekend they took in Okinawa when Kat and Samu were still in kindergarten, before the years and years of exams and study began for them. They splashed out on tickets for the shinkansen, Japan's famous historical bullet train. It was one of the first successful maglev systems in the world, even more impressive when you consider Japan was constantly experiencing earthquakes all year long. It would take them a few hours to get from their home in eastern Kanto to the shinkansen terminal in Tokyo, and then a few more hours at 320 kph to get to Kyoto. It hadn't taken Kat anything like 6 hours to get from Glasgow to Oarai, but then she had used the low orbital shuttles at the space port and the holo-ricksaws. She had been travelling for necessity though. As a family trip, the journey itself, the nostalgia of these old machines was part of the trip. The shinkasen were still lovingly maintained by a charitable foundation set up by the Hitachi Corporation who had bought out the maglev rail network just before it was to be dismantled due to unprofitability.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Some say it was an act of kindness, others a shrewd business move - in Japan even this least popular old tech because a nostalgia icon given enough time.

Shige relaxed as her family sat around in their private booth, the Japanese countryside passing by in a genuine blur, too fast for the eye to focus on. Mt. Fuji loomed into view to their north. Their snacks had just been served and Shige was enjoying some freshly peeled apple and a cup of green tea.

A soldier, she thought. My great-granddaughter wants to be a soldier.

She remembered stories her own grandfather and grandmother had told of their time during the war. The hardship. The starvation. The sense of purpose. The death. And then the peace.

Some believed, she knew, that Japan must never again be militarised. That there was something unique in the Japanese soul, the Japanese psyche that didn't know when to stop. In defeat, you fought until death. In victory, you seized the initiative and fought on even harder. But isn't this 'Japanese uniqueness' the same supremacist nonsense that got us into the war in China and the war with America in the first place? Wasn't Japan just a land of farmers, traders, artisans and artists like anywhere else?

But then, Kat wasn't going to war for Japan. She was was going to war for a foreign king, and against The Dragon.

Shige glanced at her great granddaughter. Kat was laughing and chatting with her brother. Explaining some cultural or technological novelty or other to her less worldly sibling.

She is a smart one, Shige thought, and as much as the faux mysticism of bushido was a constructed ideology, who else would Shige trust to defend our world? Better this girl of her blood, tempered by the lessons learned both in the local dojo as much as in the school classroom.

Shige didn't know if she even believed The Dragon had returned. Her vision was so poor these days that the sky could have had every single star removed and she wouldn't have noticed.

So, she thought as she chewed on her final slice of apple, we send my grandson's daughter to fight our battles. Hoping she is wise enough to know when a victory has been won and stop, or when she has lost and it is time to seek parley.

Dragon or no, victory or no, there was nobody else she would trust more. She would give her approval.