The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of weapons. The possession of these items makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues, and tends to encourage uprisings.
—Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Sai
Boring, soooo boring…
I knelt at my desk in the Confucius Academy classroom. It was a small, single-room building that couldn't have held much more than the 18 students currently inside. Here, I had the opportunity to learn to read, write, and do math. I should have been grateful, but I just wanted to run away screaming. If I weren’t meeting regularly with a member of the secret police to report on the activities at the Academy, I would have thought enrolling me was a scheme of Akiyo-sensei’s to get me educated so I could help run the kimono business.
The Academy was on the grounds of the Edo Workers Association. The Association was a large compound in the Kyobashi district where day laborers gathered, hoping to find work. It was full of young, unmarried men who had come from the provinces hoping to make their fortune. Many of them lived at the Association, so they were always sitting around the courtyard outside the Academy. I wouldn’t want to walk through there as a women. There were no girls attending the Academy. It was not the kind of place you would want to send a young girl.
I wore my usual disguise as a twelve-year-old boy. Since I used it so often, I cut my hair for a ragged ponytail instead of growing it long like most young women. The boy’s wear was comfortable—just a short linen kimono tucked into a hakama. I could move about more freely in this outfit than in a woman’s kimono, so I actually preferred it. I did have to bind my breasts to keep them from showing, but they were small, so the bindings were not uncomfortable.
I already knew hiragana, the phonetic alphabet—my sensei had made sure of that. But that wasn't used for names. Kanji, the writing system based on Chinese, was. It had thousands of characters. How could I possibly be expected to keep all those straight? Many chonin hardly knew any kanji, and I didn’t see why I should learn them. But, here I was.
If having to sit half the day writing characters wasn’t bad enough, they put me in a class with a bunch of boys between the ages of ten and thirteen. I didn't know what they expected me to find here, but in the month I had been attending the Academy, my biggest discovery was boys in that age group were even more disgusting than I had ever suspected.
On my first day, the students in the class were passing around a note and giggling. One handed it to me with a smirk. It contained a word of two kanji.
“Meat,” I said, reading the first character (I had seen that one on shop banners) and feeling proud of my knowledge. “What is the second character?”
He laughed. “The first character is for ‘meat,’ the second is for ‘stalk.’ Get it?” He thrust his pelvis forward in an exaggerated manner while grabbing his crotch for emphasis.
Ewww.
The other boys laughed, so I laughed too. A shinobi has to blend in.
“Oh look at the dimples!” the biggest boy in the group cried, reaching over to squeeze my cheeks. “He’s so cute. I’m calling him Dimples from now on.”
I forced myself to laugh along with them.
Don’t go down any dark alleys, aho. You might never come out.
Things hadn’t improved since that first day. My knowledge of kanji now included a lot of characters I would never use in the kimono business and everyone was calling me “Dimples.”
Emiko-sensei was the unfortunate soul who taught this group of perverts. She was a sweet, pretty young woman. At least half the class was in love with her. If I looked like her, I wouldn’t have to disguise myself as a boy. No one would ever suspect me of doing anything wrong. But, someone who killed people for a living probably couldn’t look that sweet. Hitoshi and his friends always escorted her to and from class. He had threatened to kill anyone who was even slightly disrespectful of her, so the men stayed away. Even the boys made some effort to behave.
Emiko-sensei came into the room, a huge smile on her face. “I have some wonderful news. The oyabun has agreed to provide some food at midday for the workers and students. Any of you who are feeling hungry after class can get some.”
Quite a few of the boys sat up and looked excited at that announcement.
Then she launched into the lesson.
That day, we were learning the Chinese characters for “Edo.” The word only had two characters, but they were complicated ones with lots of strokes. Whoever came up with them was definitely trying to impress someone.
“Now boys, I want you to clear your mind and feel the strokes,” she said from behind her desk at the front of the class as we struggled to reproduce the kanji.
Her statement caused a few snickers. She ignored them.
“Does anyone know how many people live here in the city?”
Ink dripped from my brush and made a huge splotch on my paper.
No one answered. She continued cheerfully. “Over one million. The southern barbarians tell us it is bigger than any city in the European countries or even in China. They say it has more people than any city in the world.”
One million people? That would explain why people were in my way everywhere I went. There were too many of them.
I dabbed at the ink with a rag, making the splotch even bigger. I sighed.
“When you have correctly written the characters fifteen times, show me your paper, and you may go.”
I had never seen people write so fast. They really wanted out of there.
When I finally finished my characters, I showed them to Emiko-sensei, and walked to the door. Another day with nothing to report to my contact in the secret police.
A group of giggling boys stood together in the doorway. When I approached, one of them handed me a paper. “Hey, Dimples, do you know this one?”
It had two characters written on it. “Well, the first one is ‘large,’ but what’s the second one?”
“Boob. They mean ‘big tits.’ Like Emiko-sensei.”
I crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it at him, laughing. “Sukebe.” If I ever had boy children, I was just going leave them out to die. It would save me the trouble of killing them when they reached this age.
I paused at the door and checked the courtyard carefully. As usual, day-laborers lounged around under the trees hoping to be selected for a job. Two old men played their never ending game of Go under the big camphor tree. A bunch of boys were lined up at the Workers Association building. But I didn’t see Hitoshi.
“Every lie is a shovelful of dirt dug for your grave.” One of Akiyo-sensei’s favorite sayings. Certainly the decision not to inform her I had found my older brother a couple of years earlier was turning out to be far more trouble than I had anticipated.
It hadn’t exactly been a lie. After all, I told Akiyo-sensei I had no family before I ran into Hitoshi. She wanted to be sure I had no other ties before she adopted me. So, when I did find him, years after the adoption, I thought telling her might complicate things.
He and I had lunch together from time to time, but it wasn’t the same. He felt like a stranger. But he was the only family I had left. So, I kept meeting him. I knew that someday, we would find a way to be closer.
He worked at the Edo Workers Association, so I ran the risk of having him recognize me every time I walked across the courtyard. I shuddered to think of what would happen then. But, since I couldn’t tell my sensei, I simply had to keep an eye out for him every time I went around the Workers Association.
I looked again at the boys lined up outside the door to the big, two-story Workers Association building. Just inside the door, a number of young men were handing out bowls of food to the men and boys in line. It had been some time since I had breakfast, so I joined the group.
When I finally got my meal, I was disappointed. There was so much barley and millet mixed among the rice that the food was barely edible. I'd had worse, but not since I joined Akiyo-sensei..
I was about to throw the food away when I noticed one of the smaller boys eating his. He was gulping it down as fast as he could stuff it into his mouth. When he was finished, he stared sadly at his empty bowl.
He was in my class, but I hadn’t paid him any attention before. Now that I really looked at him, though, I could see how thin he was. I didn't remember him looking this thin when I started in the class.
Suddenly, I felt terrible. I had often been hungry when I was growing up. I knew what it was like. Watching him brought back memories of my brother and I stealing food off the carts and from small shops when there was no food in the house. Hitoshi would distract the vendor and I would take anything I could grab. There was a time when I was far less fussy about my food.
I stood up and walked over to him. “I thought I was hungry, but my stomach is bothering me,” I told him, handing him my bowl. “Would you finish this for me?”
He gaped at me for a moment then, without a word, grabbed the bowl and began gulping down his extra food. I wandered back to the classroom, glancing back to see how he was doing. By the time he had eaten three-quarters of the food, he had slowed his eating and was actually pausing between bites. He was not the only one eating enthusiastically. Quite a few of the boys were hungry.
I passed a group of the older boys and men on my way to the gate.
“Tonight, at the Hour of the Pig, here at the Confucius Academy,” someone muttered as I went by. “Pass the word around, but don’t let the teachers catch you.”
Two of the older boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen, separated from the group and casually moved through the courtyard to the Workers Association headquarters building. Every so often, they would stop and say a few words to one of the men leaning against a tree or resting in the shade. Then they pushed past the crowd receiving food and went inside.
I wondered what they were up to. It might be something of interest to the secret police.
I grabbed one of the nearby boys by the arm. “What’s going on tonight?” I demanded.
“You can’t go, you’re too young and too scrawny. It’s only for thirteen and older, like me.”
“I am not too young!” I drew myself to my full height. A real boy wouldn’t take an insult like that lightly.
“Why are you asking, Dimples?“ The bully who had first tagged me with my “Dimples” nickname came up and towered over me menacingly. “Are you a spy or something?”
The boys in the group began moving toward me, eyes narrowed and ugly smiles on their faces. Much as I would have liked to teach that bunch of perverts a lesson, it would have ended my usefulness as a spy here. So, I decided I had heard enough. “No, but I don’t care about your stupid meeting.”
I darted between two of them and raced out the gate to the street before things could get any uglier. It would be some time before the meeting, and I couldn’t draw attention to myself.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The Buddhist monks tell us there are hundreds of hells, each with a different kind of torment. I’m sure a schoolroom full of boys is one of them.
*****
I arrived back at the Workers Association just before the Hour of the Pig. Shops were closing, and people were heading home. I was wearing a forest green kimono under a dark gray hakama. My obi was dark grey. The muted colors allowed me to blend into the darkness. The thickening clouds blowing in from the ocean helped as they masked the moon.
I loitered near the entrance to the Academy, trying to look like I belonged there. It wasn’t long before people began entering the building. They were mostly young men, students from the Academy, members of the Workers Association, and some of the younger local merchants. After a number of people had passed inside, I took a chance and joined up at the back of a group. Once inside, I positioned myself in a shadowed corner. The room filled quickly.
Finally, a young man came into the room, and the conversations around me stopped as everyone looked at him expectantly. He flashed a dimpled smile at the audience and I gasped in shock. It was Hitoshi. What was my idiot brother up to now?
I ducked behind some students as he moved to the front to calls of “Hitoshi!”
He smiled and waited until everyone quieted. He began speaking so quietly we had to strain to hear his words.
“When I see all the injustices in the world, I just want to smash things.” His voice held the attention of everyone in the room. In it, I heard the training of our father.
He gestured at the wakizashi at his belt. “Because I was born chonin, I am not supposed to defend myself. Wearing this sword is in the city is not acceptable, because we are ‘safe’ here. Yet the White Hilt gang prowls the streets, raping and robbing. Do the police stop them?”
There were angry mutters and shouts of “No!”
Liar. We were born hinin. Performers, beggars, and prostitutes were hinin. Like the eta, who dealt with dead things, hinin weren't even considered people. Unlike the eta, hinin could get respectable jobs and become chonin. Eta could never be anything but eta.
“No,” repeated Hitoshi. “The police only care about the samurai. We are left to protect ourselves but are not allowed the kinds of weapons we need. Is my life worth any less than a samurai’s?”
“No!”
“I am told I can’t have more than three courses at a restaurant.” His voice began to rise. “I can’t wear fancy silks. I’m not even allowed a last name. Can’t I be proud of my family? Am I any less a person?”
“No!”
“Forget having three courses at a restaurant! We are starving, and the bakufu does nothing while the rice merchants grow fat off our suffering. How many chonin children must die before the government takes notice?” He stopped for a moment. The crowd was suddenly dead silent. “All of them!”
The onlookers shouted angrily, the noise of their cries deafening in the crowded classroom.
My heart raced. I found myself shouting along with everyone else even as my brain screamed this was crazy. But I was carried along with the fervor of the crowd. Our father had trained Hitoshi to act in his roadside performances. Hitoshi never had the chance to become a performer like our parents, but he hadn’t forgotten his training. The audience was under his spell.
Lifting his arms dramatically, the crowd quieted again. Hitoshi continued in a lower voice, “The bakufu tell us we are inferior to the samurai. We are inferior to the peasants. Of the four classes—samurai, peasant, craftsman, and chonin— we chonin are the lowest, the least valuable people.” He raised his voice again. “We are the ones that make this city what it is. We run the shops. We work in their houses. We will have our due.”
I looked around. The crowd loved what they heard. Some were muttering angrily, and there was a lot of cheering. My heart tightened with fear. This sort of talk led to people disappearing. The secret police had informants everywhere. They had me. Was I the only one, though?
I scanned the faces in the room. Did anyone else look like a spy? I began sliding unobtrusively towards the door. It would be better if I weren’t seen here. If it were known I had attended and I didn’t report this meeting and someone else did, I could get into a lot of trouble. Akiyo-sensei would be furious.
I wasn’t the only one getting nervous at Hitoshi’s words. One of the merchants protested, “Hitoshi, you can’t talk like that. It’s too dangerous.”
Hitoshi looked around with defiance on his face. “I am not afraid of them. People are starving. We see the dead in the street every morning. What do they have left to threaten us with? You like living on the brink of starvation? I would rather die than to continue on this way. What has to happen before you are ready to protest? Maybe when you have to sell your daughter to a brothel for a few handfuls of rice?”
Hitoshi leaned forward, his voice echoing off the walls theatrically. “Can you pay your rent? Can you feed your family? Can you protect them?”
The muttering in the room grew louder. I could feel the anger in the crowd. The people around me were drinking in his words. This is what they were here for. Hitoshi was far more dangerous than I had ever suspected.
I couldn’t watch any more. The secret police would love to hear about this meeting, but I didn’t want to report it. They would kill Hitoshi. He was all I had left of my family. I couldn’t betray him.
Get out of here, Sai, you want no part of this.
I moved to leave, but a chonin lad racing through the door almost knocked me over. He shouted, “The White Hilts! They’ve attacked Hachirō the saké brewer in front of his shop.”
A babble of noise broke out as everyone jumped to their feet. Hitoshi silenced them, yelling, “Pull up the tatami. Line up for your weapons.”
What?
Men yanked the tatami mats off the floor in one of the corners. Hitoshi lifted the wood slats underneath. Once he had a large enough hole, he jumped down onto the bare dirt under the building.
He bent over and reached under the remaining floorboards. When he straightened up, he held a tightly wrapped bundle that he threw into the middle of the room. It clanked when it hit the tatami. Others unwrapped it to reveal swords, knives, and spears. They began passing the weapons out to the group.
I clapped my hands over my eyes in horror.
Oh no! No! Why did I have to see that? If the secret police found out about the weapons, they would kill everyone associated with the Academy. What was Hitoshi thinking?
I stepped outside and stood in the darkness near the door, unable to tear my eyes from the activities in the classroom. I wished I had never overheard the plans for this meeting.
Before Hitoshi had finished, he had pulled out three wrapped bundles, and every person in the room carried some sort of weapon. He stuffed the wrappings back under the building, then three of the students replaced the floor slats and tatami. They were done before the messenger had a chance to catch his breath.
Men and boys streamed out of the Academy into the night, carrying their weapons in silence as they raced down the street. The clouds had covered the moon, giving the lamp-lit mob an eerie feel as they ran through the dark, nearly empty streets. The few people still out stepped to the side of the streets as the group passed them and then hurried away. They knew trouble was coming.
"You two take care of each other. Family is all we have." My mother used to tell us. I think she mostly meant it for Hitoshi, since he was two years older than me, but I always tried to do my part. When we were little, Hitoshi got jumped by some bigger boys. Screaming "I am going to bite off your ears!" I attacked the nearest bully. The fight didn't go well for us, but the boys left us alone after that.
Now, Hitoshi and his friends were going to be cut to pieces. I didn’t want to let him be killed. I couldn't stop it. What could I do? I trailed behind the mob until I saw them confront a group of six or seven ronin. I slipped around the side of a nearby building and searched for a place to climb. A stack of boxes provided some steps, and I jumped from the stack onto the top of the building. Slipping my sandals off, I crawled up the gutter valley up to the roof ridge. The tiles had lost most of the afternoon heat but were still warm. I ran along the ridge until I had a good view of the action below.
Hitoshi stood in front of the group from the Academy, arguing with a ronin carrying a katana with the hilt wrapped in white leather. The other samurai with him also had white leather on their hilts. Just behind Hitoshi, a man lay in the street. He had been badly beaten.
I couldn’t hear their exact words, but Hitoshi was very upset. He raised his sword and stepped forward to confront the samurai when a scream came from beyond the White Hilts. I crept forward on my belly until I saw two ronin holding a young woman by the arms. She cried and struggled to free herself but couldn’t break the grip of her captors.
“Stay back!” the leader of the White Hilts called out in a loud voice. “Unless you want something to happen to the saké brewer’s pretty daughter,” he pointed to the two samurai holding the struggling young woman, “you’d better walk away. We’ll send her back in a little while, hardly any the worse for wear.” The leader and the samurai with him laughed at the crude joke.
Hitoshi raised his sword, shaking. He seemed barely able to restrain himself.
I felt anger slowly build inside me. I couldn’t let those ronin take that young woman.
She screamed as one of the ronin twisted her arm.
Her scream mirrored the screams in my memory. The screams of the new women taken by force in the brothel where I had once lived. I remembered myself as a helpless child—hiding in the corner with a robe over my head, sobbing and trying to escape their cries. That is why I had worked so hard with my sensei. So that no one would ever be able to treat me that way.
I was no helpless child. I didn’t have to listen to that again.
I wrapped my obi around my hair and over my face, leaving only a narrow opening to see through. Moving slowly so as not to call attention to myself. I slipped my tantō out from under my kimono.
I shouldn’t do this. I was only supposed to kill sanctioned targets. Although, if you asked me, all ronin should be sanctioned targets.
Watching the two ronin with the woman, I got to my knees, and cocked my arm back, focusing on the one closest to me.
He’s not a sanctioned target, but I am not likely to kill him at this distance—I’ll be lucky to hit him at all. And if I do kill him, it must be the judgement of Heaven.
I took careful aim, threw the knife, and dropped flat onto the roof, keeping just my head above the peak to observe. The throw was less than perfect, and the knife blade rotated to an awkward angle before hitting the ronin. He yelped, masking the sound of the knife hitting the ground. He let go of the girl and used his hands to probe the wound in his back. Crying out when he saw blood on his hand, he started searching around for his assailant.
His companion on the other side of the girl looked over to see what was wrong. Although I didn’t think the tantō had penetrated very far, it must have made a long cut, because a large stain of blood had already formed on the back of the light kimono of my target. Startled at the injury of his fellow, the second ronin dropped the woman’s arm and started searching the street for an attacker.
The moment the woman was free, she fled to the chonin around Hitoshi.
Now that the girl was safe, Hitoshi attacked the ronin leader. His chonin joined him with blades and spears.
The samurai slashed at the chonin with their katana. The White Hilts were poorly trained and handled their weapons without much skill. Unfortunately, the chonin were even worse. Some of the spearmen were in the front blocking other chonin with swords and knives who were unable to reach a target. At least two men were injured by their fellow chonin. But the chonin had numbers in their favor.
“Yoke! Yoke formation!” the White Hilt leader screamed. The White Hilts looked confused. “No! I mean fish scales!”
Oh great, we have a tactical genius here. Too bad he never trained his men.
The White Hilts milled around in confusion, but they managed to pull together into a lopsided circle.
One ronin didn’t make it to the group and was quickly surrounded and cut down.
“Counterattack!” the leader yelled. “Don’t let that low-born scum scare you.” Several White Hilts moved to obey.
In just moments, there were two chonin lying in puddles of blood and three others wounded and out of the fight. Although the White Hilt leader got a good cut in on Hitoshi’s arm, Hitoshi continued to press him. The leader made a brutal assault on Hitoshi, driving him back three or four steps.
I pulled another knife out but didn’t have a clear shot.
I scrambled back to climb down the way I came up.
The White Hilt leader withdrew into the center of the group of samurai. Reaching into his obi, he pulled a tube from his belt, raised it to his mouth, and blew.
Those in front of him began coughing and rubbing their eyes. It affected both ronin and chonin.
“Daichi, you idiot, what are you doing?” yelled one of the ronin between coughs.
Soon all the combatants were coughing and wiping their eyes. The battle had come to a halt as they blindly staggered away.
The scent of red pepper came to me.
How much metsubushi powder did he use?
“This stuff really works!” Daichi gasped.
“You blinded everyone, bakka. Didn’t that shinobi tell you how to use it?” one of White Hilts behind Daichi asked, still coughing.
Others in the group cursed Daichi.
Yes, Daichi, what are you doing? And where did you get the metsubushi powder? Most importantly of all, what shinobi are they talking about?
The powder kept spreading, and both sides were forced to take their wounded and abandon the field of battle, leaving their dead where they lay for the eta to clean up in the morning. I stayed where I was until everyone had left, and the sound of closing shutters stopped. I let myself down into the street to retrieve my tantō. I could just imagine Akiyo-sensei’s reaction if I told her I had lost a three-ryō weapon at a fight between rival chonin and ronin gangs.
I stared at the knife. Her reaction would be far worse if I told her a ronin had used metsubushi powder he got from a shinobi. The laws of the clan were absolutely clear. Our ways were to be kept secret. Akiyo-sensei had refused to teach me any of the arts of the shinobi until after the clan had approved my adoption. If a shinobi taught people outside the clan, every other clan-member was sworn to kill him.
I hurried off. It was almost midnight and getting across town after the gates closed was difficult, even for me.
Could anything else go wrong? Is it possible for this night to get any worse?
With a peal of thunder, the rain came pouring down, soaking me to the skin in moments.