1636: Seas of Fortune (54 page)

After giving himself twenty lashes, Kanesada handed the
muchi
back to the headman, bowed to the Indians, and said, “tell them they are free to go.” He gathered up his swords and left the room, upper body still bare.

Kodachi Machi/Santa Cruz

Hiraki bowed to his parents. “Will grandfather be all right?”

Takuma and Mizuki exchanged glances. “The headman has sent a mounted messenger to Kawa Machi, to ask that Ihaku-sama come and see him,” Takuma told him. “He is a very great physician from Kyoto. He treated the big merchants, and the samurai, and even the cloud-dwellers.” The last was the poetic name given to the
kuge
, the court nobles. They didn’t pay well, but the prestige of administering to the court did attract a snobbish clientele that had money.

“Once, he was permitted to reach between curtains and touch the emperor’s toe!” Mizuki added. That was, of course, the emperor Go-Mizunoo, who renounced the throne in 1629, as part of the political fallout from the “Purple Clothes Incident” two years earlier. “And yet, after the ‘America’ Edict, he revealed himself to be a
kirishitan
. Think of what he has sacrificed for the faith. How can he fail, being so knowledgeable and yet so holy?”

* * *

At last, Ihaku arrived, together with his apprentice. At the entrance, he carefully set down the katana that, as a doctor, he was permitted to carry.

Mizuki greeted them and led them to her father-in-law’s bedside.

“Daizo, tell me about your illness.” Daizo mumbled something, eyes closed. “Daizo?”

Ihaku turned to Mizuki. “When did he first become sick?”

“About three days ago he complained of a headache,” said Mizuki. “I felt his forehead and it was hot to the touch. Yesterday he was nauseous, his tummy hurt, and he vomited several times that night. Today he was listless, and I noticed that he had a rash on his palms, wrists, soles and ankles. He says his calves are aching, too.”

Ihaku felt old Daizo’s forehead, and motioned for his apprentice to do the same. Ihaku looked at him. “What is your diagnosis?”

“Mine?”

“Is there another apprentice in the room?”

“There is excess of both dampness and heat.” Meaning, diarrhea and fever.

“And what is the proper treatment?”

“We must cool the blood with
Qin-Wen-Bai-Du
, and dry the digestion with
Huo Xiang Zheng Qi Wan
. As for the head and muscle aches, moxibustion would be best.” That involved applying mugwort to a patient’s skin, near appropriate acupuncture points, and burning it. “But I think we have run out, Ihaku-sensei.”

“Mugwort?” asked Mizuki. “Daizo-san said he found some, or at least a plant like it. I’ll fetch it.” She came back with some California mugwort. “He found it a week or two ago.”

Ihaku rubbed it on his own skin, then sniffed it. “I think this will do.

“I am getting too old for this traipsing about, especially in this alien land,” he told his apprentice. “Perhaps you should stay here and be their resident physician.”

“I am not worthy.”

“When I am dead, you will have to be worthy.”

Maruya/Carmel

“I think I must tender my resignation as commander,” said Kanesada.

“Don’t be foolish,” First-to-Dance replied; “that was a stroke of genius.”

“What, attacking the wrong Indians?”

“No,
that
was stupid. I meant, scourging yourself.”

“I did it because it’s what the Christians do as penance for sins.”

“Well, that sort of ‘self-sacrifice’ is what
shamans
do. The Indians went home thinking that you are a powerful medicine man. They will go out of their way to please you, I think.”

Kanesada’s eyebrows twitched, ever so slightly. And then he smiled, so evanescently that First-to-Dance wondered whether she had imagined it. “I suppose I can wait and see how matters unfold. I can always resign next month, if need be.”

First-to-Dance wondered what she might do to persuade Kanesada to smile some more.

Kodachi Machi/Santa Cruz

Hiraki suddenly poked his head through the sliding door. “Grandfather wants you, Poppa.”

Takuma walked, first quickly and then slowly, to Daizo’s sickroom.

He was astonished to find his grandfather chanting “Namu Amida Butsu.” This was the the
nembutsu
, the ticket to Amida’s Western Paradise for the followers of “Pure Land” Buddhism.

“Father! Have you forsaken Our Lord Jesu?”

“Oh no,” said Daizo weakly. “Look!” He held out his rosary beads. “I prayed in the Christian manner first. But what if Deusu refuses to have mercy on my soul? For more than half my life, I was proud, and greedy, and lustful. I pray to Amida Buddha so I can go to the Pure Land if I am not found worthy of Heaven.”

Takuma couldn’t help himself. He laughed. “Always trying to hedge your bets, Father.”

“It’s good business sense. Hmm. While you’re at it, make sure to have an
ihai
made for me.”

The
ihai
was a memorial tablet; the family would pray before it during the Forty-Nine Days of Judgment, in which the fate of the new soul was decided. That is, which heaven, if any, it would go to, and if it were sent to
jigoku
—the Buddhist hell—how many millennia it would remain there. Pure Land Buddhists didn’t rely on
ihai
; they thought that faith in Amida Buddha was sufficient for them to be reborn directly to Paradise.

The early Christian converts burnt their family
ihai
, but this was construed as evidence that the Christian church did not believe in filial piety, leading to official displeasure. The Jesuits decided to tolerate ancestor veneration as a secular practice; the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians, whose missionaries began coming to Japan in 1602, vehemently disagreed. For the
kirishitan
, it had all been very confusing.

“My illness has reminded me of how close I am to passage to the other side,” said Daizo.

“Don’t speak that way, Father. Your fever has gone down; soon you’ll feel yourself again.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But the next time, Death may take me suddenly by the throat, and deny me the opportunity to say what I must. We need to talk about the division of my property, and the future of our family.”

And so they spoke. Then Daizo said, “My throat is dry, bring me some sake.”

“The doctor said, ‘no strong drink.’”

“And if I die tomorrow, nonetheless, would you want your memory burdened by the thought that you had denied me one last pleasure?”

Takuma brought him the sake.

* * *

But the fever returned, and the rash continued to spread, until it covered his entire body. Each day, Daizo seemed less and less aware of his surroundings. He also complained about there being too much light in sick room. Three days after Ihaku’s visit, Daizo took a sharp turn for the worse. He was short of breath all day, and awoke several times that night, gasping for air. In the morning, Takuma couldn’t help but notice how swollen Daizo’s legs and abdomen had become. Takuma sent for Dr. Ihaku once more.

Ihaku returned, and then motioned Takuma out of the sickroom. He slid the door shut and whispered, “I am sorry. He has less than one chance in ten thousand of living.” The physician’s shoulders slumped, ever so slightly. “There is nothing I can do, other than join you in prayer.”

The next day, Daizo was dead.

* * *

The
ojiyaku
had arrived at the cemetery. His title literally meant “the grandfather official,” he was the leader of the local chapter of the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Jesuit confraternity. As such, he outranked Takuma, who was merely a
mizukata
, a baptizer.

The
ojiyaku
held up a candle and slowly and reverently drew two strokes in the air with it, one vertical, the other horizontal. Then he lit it and blew it out, three times in succession, and each time cried, “The way is open!” He lit it a fourth time and placed it down beside the corpse of Daizo, the revered father of Yamaguchi Takuma. Hiraki held his mother’s hand.

He very carefully took out of a bag a small porcelain flask, kissed it, and removed the stopper. Inside was a small quantity of holy water. It was an extremely precious commodity in California. Since there were no priests to bless water locally, it had to be blessed by the imprisoned missionaries back home, and then shipped across the Pacific. The shogunate charged dearly for it. The First Fleet had nearly run out of its entire supply, but fortunately more had been brought over by the Second Fleet.

The
ojiyaku
dipped a piece of bamboo into the flask and then used it to sprinkle a few drops over the deceased. The mourners then joined him in prayer. They prayed that the man’s soul would go to heaven, and they prayed that the deceased’s ghost would not wander during the first forty-nine days after death, when it was most dangerous to the living.

At last, came the final “Amen!” The
ojiyaku
put an
omaburi
, a paper cross, into the deceased’s right ear, and then motioned for the coffin to be closed. There was, of course, a cross incised into the lid. Several strong men grabbed hold of the coffin handles and delicately lowered it into the grave.

The
ojiyaku
was handed a shovel, and he thrust its blade into the earth. He lifted, and upended the first, ceremonial dirtful onto the coffin. Then he handed the shovel to one of the younger men, and the grave was soon filled in.

Ninth Month, 13th day (October 23, 1635)

There was a long, slow procession to the cemetery outside the town. The colonists placed flowers and lit candles on the graves, and then sat down on the grass nearby and opened their picnic baskets. They spent most of the day “visiting” with (and sometimes toasting) the dead.

Their serenity was disturbed by the arrival of Franciscus and his followers, some of whom looked as though they had been doing some drinking of their own.

“Are you good Christians?” he asked the mourners. “It is good to pray, in church, for the reduction of the departed’s time in Purgatory. But I think that some of you have gone beyond that. How many of you keep
ihai
in your homes? Do you burn incense and kowtow to them, as if their souls were enshrined in them? Do you pray to your ancestors, asking them to aid you, as if they were the demons who masquerade back in Nippon as buddhas and kamis? Do you have
butsudan
or
kamidana
in your homes?

“If you have done any of those things, then you are not Christians at all, you are apostates. You should be denied all communions of the Church and when you die, you will go to Hell for all eternity.”

There was a stunned silence. It was
Otomurai
, the day for remembering those recently dead, and praying that if they were in purgatory, that their souls would quickly pass into heaven. Before Christianity was banned in Japan, there would have been a mass in church, at least in those towns that had a church. But a mass could only be celebrated with a priest. Now, the
kirishitan
had to make do with
Otomurai
, itself a fractured memory of the Catholic All Souls’ Day. To the mourners, there was nothing un-Christian about what they were doing.

Yamaguchi Takuma tried to intercede. “Please, Brother Franciscus, you are disturbing the harmony of the occasion. Let us have the leaders of the confraternities meet with you to discuss your concerns, and we—”

“Why should I consult with you? Are you my equals in Christian learning? I studied the faith in a seminary in Manila. You had what, ten days instruction in the catechisms, spread over as many years?

“And as for you, Takuma, you are one of the big offenders! You have a
butsudan
, wreathed in incense. Why, I think your father’s death is divine punishment for your family’s sins!”

Takuma’s eyes widened. “How dare you!”

“To Takuma’s house,” Franciscus shouted. “Smash the
butsudan
, burn the
ihai
! Set an example for the community; no backsliding is to be tolerated.”

Takuma tried to block them, but was knocked down. But Franciscus and his followers didn’t get very far, as Takuma’s friends slammed into them.

Some minutes later, the brawl still going strong, the samurai arrived, and trussed up everyone still standing. Katakura Shigetsuna and David Date came and questioned everyone; Takuma and his friends were released, with warnings and fines, and Franciscus and his supporters were sent to Date Masamune for judgment.

* * *

Date Masamune cleared his throat. “Ahem. Herald, please remind everyone present of the text of clause five of the Edict of Kan’ei 11 concerning the
kirishitan
.”

The obugyô bowed, took a deep breath, and began reciting it from memory: “‘In order to be permitted to go to New Nippon, they must take oath, on pain of eternal punishment by the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, as well as by Saint Mary and all Angels and Saints—”

“Skip to part (c), please,” Masamune interjected.

“Ahem, ‘(c) they will not oppress the worshipers of the buddhas and kamis, or the followers of Confucius, in that land, or prevent any Christian from renouncing that faith and returning to any of the traditional religions of Nippon.’”

Masamune stared at each of the prisoners in turn. “You took that oath?”

They inclined their heads.

“Say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ please; you were quick enough to speak earlier.”

“Yes, milord,” they chorused. Franciscus tried to justify his actions, but didn’t get far. “But—” A guardsman silenced him with a heavy slap against the side of his head. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

“And, Herald, what says clause two of the Black Seal Edict concerning New Nippon?”

“‘Within the province of New Nippon, freedom of worship is permitted, provided that it does not disturb public harmony.’”

Masamune said nothing for a whole minute. Naturally, no one else dared break the silence. Finally, he pronounced his judgment. “Prisoners, you are oath-breakers and law-breakers. I could have you beheaded here and now. I could crucify you, or burn you at the stake. I could have you bound and thrown into the sea, or left as chew toys in front of a bear den. Moreover, under the doctrine of collective responsibility, I could punish every member of your families, to the same or a lesser degree.