Read The Samurai's Daughter Online
Authors: Lesley Downer
Tags: #Asia, #Chick-Lit, #Fiction, #Historical, #Japan, #Love Stories, #Romance, #Women's Fiction
The Samurai's Daughter
About the Book
In the brave new Japan of the 1870s, Taka and Nobu meet as children and fall in love; but their relationship will test the limits of society.
Unified after a bitter civil war, Japan is rapidly turning into a modern country with rickshaws, railways and schools for girls. Commoners can marry their children into any class, and the old hatred between north and south is over – or so it seems.
Taka is from the powerful southern Satsuma clan which now rules the country, and her father, General Kitaoka, is a leader of the new government. Nobu, however, is from the northern Aizu clan, massacred by the Satsuma in the civil war. Defeated and reduced to poverty, his family has sworn revenge on the Satsuma.
Taka and Nobu’s love is unacceptable to both their families and must be kept secret, but what they cannot foresee is how quickly the tables will turn. Many southern samurai become disillusioned with the new regime, which has deprived them of their swords, status and honour. Taka’s father abruptly leaves Tokyo and returns to the southern island of Kyushu, where trouble is brewing.
When he and his clansmen rise in rebellion, the government sends its newly-created army to put them down. Nobu and his brothers have joined this army, and his brothers now see their chance of revenge on the Satsuma. But Nobu will have to fight and maybe kill Taka’s father and brother, while Taka now has to make a terrible choice: between her family and the man she loves ...
Based on the true story of the ‘last samurai’,
The Samurai’s Daughter
is a novel about a nation divided and a love that can never be.
Contents
Part II: The Weaver Princess and the Cowherd
Part V: Across a Magpie Bridge
The Samurai’s Daughter
Lesley Downer
To Arthur
| Haru no yo no | On a spring night |
| Yume no ukihashi | The floating bridge of dreams |
| Todae shite | Breaks off: |
| Mine ni wakaruru | Swirling round the mountaintop |
| Yokogumo no sora | A cloud drifts into the open sky |
Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241)
The Gion Temple bells toll the impermanence of all things; the sala flowers beside the Buddha’s deathbed bear testimony to the fact that all who flourish must decline. The proud do not endure, they vanish like a spring night’s dream. The mighty fall at last like dust before the wind.
The Tale of the Heike
(compiled around 1371)
PART I
The Black Peony
1
Tenth month, year of the rooster, the sixth year of the Meiji era (November 1873)
A SAVOURY AROMA
seeped through the curtained doorway and around the window frames of the Black Peony, the most famous restaurant in the entire city of Tokyo. Taka gripped the rim of the rickshaw to stop herself shooting forward as it jolted to a halt and the boy dropped the shafts to the ground. She sat back in her seat, closed her eyes and took a long deep breath. The smell filled the air, akin to the tang of grilling eel but pungent, oilier, richer. Beef, roasting beef: the smell of the new age, of civilization, of enlightenment. And she, Taka Kitaoka, at the very grown-up age of thirteen, was about to have her first taste.
Fujino, her mother, had already clambered down from the rickshaw in front and disappeared through the doorway with a shiver of her voluminous dove-grey skirts. Aunt Kiharu bobbed behind her, tiny and elegant in a kimono and square-cut haori jacket, like a little ship after a huge one, followed by Taka’s sister, Haru, in a pale yellow princess-line dress, her hair in a glossy chignon.
Taka too was in a western-style dress. It was the first time she’d ever worn one and she felt proud and self-conscious and a little
nervous
. It was a rose-pink day dress with a nipped-in waist and the hint of a bustle, brand new and of soft silk, specially commissioned from a tailor in Yokohama. She’d told Okatsu, her maid, to pull her corset so tight she could hardly breathe, and had put on a jacket and gloves and a matching bonnet. She lifted her skirts carefully as she went through the vestibule, past rows of boots smelling of leather and polish.
Inside the Black Peony it was hot and steamy and full of extraordinary smells and sounds. Smoke from the cooking meat mingled with the fug of tobacco that blanketed the room. Above the hubbub of voices and laughter, slurps and the smacking of lips, there were hoarse shouts of ‘Over here! Another plate of your fine beef!’ ‘The fire’s going out. Bring more charcoal, quick!’ ‘Another flask of sake!’ As a well-brought-up young lady, Taka knew she was supposed to keep her eyes modestly fixed on her mother’s skirts, but she couldn’t help it. She simply had to look around.
The room was crammed with men, big and small, old and young, sitting cross-legged around square tables, each with a charcoal brazier sunk in the centre, dipping their chopsticks into cast iron pans in which something meaty sizzled and bubbled as if it were alive, changing hue from red to brown. They were dressed in the most extraordinary fashions, some like traditional gentlemen in loose robes and obis, others in high-collared shirts with enormous gold timepieces dangling from their breast pockets and with stiff-brimmed hats and furled black bat-wing umbrellas laid on the floor beside them. Sheets of paper were pinned along the walls with words brushed in the angular
katakana
script which marked them as foreign:
miruku, cheezu, bata
– ‘milk’, ‘cheese’, ‘butter’ – words that anyone with any hope of being seen as modern had at least to pretend to be acquainted with.
Taka had never before been in such an exotic place or seen such an assortment of terrifyingly fashionable people. She gazed around in wonder then flushed and quickly dropped her eyes when she realized that the men were staring back.
‘Otaka!’ her mother called, using the polite form of Taka’s name.
Picking up her skirts, Taka raced after her down the hallway and into an inner room. It was filled with heavy wooden furniture that cast long shadows in the flickering light of candles and oil lamps. Maids slid the door closed behind her but she could still hear the raucous shouts and laughter. She settled herself on a chair, smoothing the swathes of fabric, trying not to reveal how awkward she felt with her legs dangling instead of folded under her in the usual way. Her mother had spread herself over three chairs to support all the ruffles and layers of her tea dress. Maids fanned the charcoal in the braziers then carried in plates of dark red, shiny meat and laid slices on the hot iron griddle. As the smell of burning flesh filled the air, Taka wrinkled her nose in dismay.
‘I don’t think I can eat this,’ she whispered to Haru.
‘You know what Mr Fukuzawa says.’
Taka looked admiringly at her sister’s gleaming chignon, envying the way she was so perfect and never had a hair out of place. Two years older than Taka, Haru seemed grown up already. She was always smiling and serene, ready to accept whatever came her way. She picked up her chopsticks and leaned forward.
‘We have to eat meat to nourish our bodies if we’re to be tall and strong, like westerners.’
‘But it smells so … so peculiar. Will I still be able to pray to Buddha and the gods if I eat it? Won’t it make me smell like a westerner? You’ll be able to smell it wherever I go.’
‘Just listen to you girls,’ trilled Aunt Kiharu, putting her dainty fingers to her chin and tilting her small head. ‘Haven’t you read
Cross-legged round the Stew Pot
?’
‘Of course not,’ said Fujino primly. ‘They don’t read such nonsense. They’re well-brought-up young ladies. They go to school. They know far more already than you or I ever will. History, science, how the earth began, how to talk properly and add up figures …’
‘Ah, but, my dear Fujino, I wonder if they’re acquainted with
the
important things – how to please a man and entertain him and make sure he never leaves your side!’
Fujino folded her fan and tapped her smartly on the arm, clucking in mock disapproval. ‘Really, Kiharu-
sama
. Give them time.’
Aunt Kiharu was Taka’s mother’s closest friend. They had been geishas together in Kyoto and Taka had known her ever since she was a little girl. Now she tipped her head coquettishly and gave a knowing smile, then pursed her lips and recited in a high-pitched lilt:
‘Samurai, farmer; artisan or trader
;
oldster, youngster; boy or girl
;
clever or stupid, poor or elite
,
you won’t get civilized if you don’t eat meat!
Meat for the winter months – milk, cheese and butter, too
;
Scrotum of bull will make a man out of you!’
Fujino hooted with laughter. She dipped her chopsticks into the simmering pan, lifted out a slice of greying meat and placed it neatly in Taka’s bowl. ‘We don’t want to turn you into a man, but we certainly want you to be civilized!’
Taka chewed the morsel thoughtfully, turning it round and round in her mouth. It was stringy and there was something rather nauseating about the taste but she would have to get used to it if she was to be a modern woman. She thought of the rickshaw boy waiting outside, smoking his pipe, and the grooms squatting in the antechamber. It was a shame they would never have the chance to be civilized, but that was just the way it had to be.
That year Taka’s body had changed more than she could ever have imagined possible. She’d grown long and slender like a young bamboo, she’d seen breasts swelling under her kimonos, she’d had her first bleed – she’d become a woman. If she’d stayed in the ancient capital, Kyoto, where she was born, she’d be
finishing
her geisha training by now and preparing for her ritual deflowering. But instead here she was in the bustling city of Tokyo, learning to be a modern woman.
