Kiku's Prayer Part 27

The captives could still endure the pummeling and the kicking. And they labored to turn a deaf ear to all the appealing enticements. But the steadily increasing cold of late autumn and the hunger they suffered began to weaken the bodies of these twenty-eight prisoners.

When they were punched and kicked, they mustered their courage by feeling anger at the unjust treatment. Or they put up with it knowing that if they endured it for only a time, the brutality would eventually have to end.

But starvation was not a temporary condition. Hunger continued day after day, like a rainy season with no letup, and it took its toll on their bodies. Some staggered when they stood up, others often felt dizzy.

"Look how thin my cheeks have gotten! I've turned into quite a handsome fellow!" Initially Seikichi and the others showed their faces to one another and chuckled feebly, but they began to realize that it wasn't just their cheeks that had dropped flesh; their arms and thighs were also progressively wasting away. As they grew even thinner, their skin turned opaque and rough, as though sprinkled with flour. Before long, their bellies began to swell abnormally. They were beginning to show signs of malnutrition.

In addition- In addition, no matter what the activity-even shifting their bodies slightly-all movement became a torment. The listless desire to lie down, unalleviated feelings of exhaustion, as though their bodies were encased in lead-these feelings continued throughout each day. If there was anything they thought about, it was eating.

They tried to chew the meager daily ration of rice for as long a period of time as possible and then swallow it with their spittle. That was Sen'emon's suggestion. But an unbearable hunger seized them in the middle of the night, which they could only put at bay by drinking some of the water they had put aside.

"Do you think the men who were taken to other places are going through the same kinds of struggles that we are?"

The 113 men exiled from Urakami had been dispersed to Tsuwano and also to Hagi and f.u.kuyama. They had no way to find out the fate of those who had been shipped off to the other two locations.

Soon they no longer had the strength even to think. Young Seikichi initially thought about Kiku from time to time, but soon it became like a dream and lost all sense of reality. He couldn't imagine any reason why a woman would continue to have feelings for an outcast such as him.

I imagine . . . I imagine even she has forgotten all about me by now....

He felt neither regret nor sorrow. It seemed perfectly natural; in any case, he was suffering far more because of starvation than because of her.

"Sen'emon, we can't bear this anymore. Please talk to the officers!"

Surrendering to the entreaties of the other men, Sen'emon pleaded frantically with one of the officers. "If this goes on much longer, we'll all die!"

The officer curled up his lip. "Why are you worrying about your lives? I thought you believed that this life means nothing to you!" he mockingly responded. "And don't you claim your Deus or whoever he is will give you anything you want? Why don't you ask your Deus for help? Tell him you'd like more to eat!"

This officer a.s.sumed they would eventually admit defeat.

These men from Nagasaki were unfamiliar with the winters in the San'in region in northwestern Honshu. They were ignorant of the depths that the snows can reach in Tsuwano. The officials speculated that the prisoners would be unable to endure the freezing winter on top of their hunger and before long would cave in.

It unfolded just as they had thought it would- Winter crept up on the prisoners. Autumn, with its bright colors ablaze on the hills surrounding the village, fled at a gallop, and Mount Aono and Mount Shiroyama grew desolate. Nights became intolerably cold.

The men had no bedding. It had all been taken from them. All they had been given in its place was a single thin straw rug each. It would be impossible to tolerate the cold with only that one little rug.

They decided to sleep in groups of two, clinging to each other beneath a pair of the rugs. Their hope was that they could warm each other with their body heat. They no longer cared anything about awkwardness or appearances.

Still, by the middle of the night, it grew too cold to sleep. Wrapped in each other's arms, they were somehow able to keep their abdomens warm, thanks to their body heat, but the chill wind on their backs was unbearable.

Next they tried sleeping back to back. Then their abdomens became cold as ice. In the darkness they coughed, turned over repeatedly on the floor, dozed off from time to time, and waited for the dawn to break.

"Let's say an oraci!" Trying to hearten the men who seemed on the brink of breaking, Sen'emon began to pray aloud and bid the others to join in chorus. The voices of the men united in prayer in the darkness sounded almost like groans.

"What is wrong with this Deus of yours?" From time to time an officer would stop by to taunt them. "What has he done for you? Do you still believe in your Deus who won't even give you a mattress?"

Such words had a more powerful effect on these starved, semiconscious prisoners than the enticements of Satan.

Why do we have to go through all this? Surely Lord Jezusu and Santa Maria know how much we're suffering. But they do nothing to help us. Occasionally such thoughts flickered through their minds.

One night, the cold was painful beyond words. They could tell it was snowing outside. In the dark they heard a man weeping.

"What are you blubbering about?!" Sen'emon asked with deliberate harshness. "Lord Jezusu endured even more pain as he carried his cross!"

The rest of the men listened in silence to the tongue-lashing. But every one of them felt alone. They had to battle starvation and cold on their own.

At dawn they had their first glimpse of what the snows in Tsuwano were actually like. Snow had never piled up this much in Nagasaki or Urakami. The snow had quit falling, but there were mountains of snow everywhere, everything was white, and the cold was intense.

"No food this morning. Just an interrogation," a prison guard dressed in a straw coat called out from amid the snow.

What could they possibly still have to ask us?

But they could not disobey an order. As they formed a row and walked down the hallway to a back room of the vacant temple where other officers were just waking up, they appeared to every eye like a procession of ghosts.

They were ordered to sit on the icy wooden floor at the front of the room. A hibachi with red coals smoldering inside had been placed in the room, and there three officers seemed to relish the warm breakfast they were eating.

The scent of steaming miso soup, and the sound of pickled radishes being chewed. Forcing the starving Kiris.h.i.tans to smell and hear these things was inhuman torture. Even if they lowered their eyes and tried not to look, the sound of hot tea being slurped and the smell of the soup mercilessly provoked their empty stomachs. They wanted to scream.

An elderly official sipped his tea and asked, "You'd like some of this? Of course you would! We aren't devils, you know. Seeing you so skinny and shaking, naturally we're moved to compa.s.sion. We'd like to give you something to eat. We wish we could offer you some winter clothing. But we have orders from our leaders that we can't show you any form of mercy until you reject the heathen teachings.... We'll have to continue the cruel treatment." His voice sounded almost bewildered. "Stop being so endlessly stubborn and making things difficult for us. All you have to say is 'I've had a change of heart' . . . and, look here, we'll give you all the warm rice you can eat. We'll move you to another temple right away and give you warm bedding to sleep in."

He set down his teacup and looked around at the men with steely eyes. "I understand.... None of you who'd like to have this over with can say the words while you're all here together. We'll have you come one by one into the next room, and you can whisper to me whether you will continue in your beliefs or reject them. Those who recant will be given food in a separate room so none of the others knows. But those who remain adamant will be taken back to their cells."

He got to his feet, opened the sliding door to the next room, and vanished within.

Their names were called one by one. One by one, they went into the neighboring room. The man asking the question and the man answering spoke in low voices so that no one would know how anybody responded.

I will keep my faith. After each man made this declaration, he returned on wobbly legs to the wretched room where they were held prisoner. Those who had already completed the ritual and returned to the cell rubbed their hands together and flashed each man who rejoined them a sad smile.

They returned, one, then another, then yet another. But of the twenty-eight, eight did not come back. Those eight had apostatized.

"Dammit!" Seikichi shouted angrily. Even he didn't know who he was angry with. Was it with the eight who had apostatized? Was it with the officers whose methods were so heartless? Was it with some invisible power? Or was it with G.o.d, who said nothing . . . ?

1. Iwakuni Castle, which is included in the "top 100" castles of j.a.pan.

2. Nishi Amane (18291897) studied at the University of Leiden and, after returning to j.a.pan, introduced such Western philosophies as utilitarianism and empiricism. He also published an encyclopedia, headed the Tokyo Academy, and was a member of the House of Peers. Mori gai (18621922) was one of the great t.i.tans of Meiji literature. He studied medical hygiene in Germany; served as surgeon general of the j.a.panese army; and, in a separate career, translated many European and Scandinavian novels, poems, and plays, and produced his own original works, one of the most famous being Gan (The Wild Goose, 19111913; trans. 1995).

3. Kokugaku (National Learning) was a philosophical and scholarly reaction against the prevailing intellectual and political preoccupation with Chinese Confucian and Buddhist texts. Some scholars in the mid-nineteenth century turned their attention instead to the earliest j.a.panese cla.s.sics-the Kojiki and Nihon shoki (early-eighth-century collections of native myths) and the first great poetry anthology, the Man'ysh (late eighth century)-in a quest for a "purer" j.a.paneseness that predated Chinese influence.

MARUYAMA.

WHILE THE PRISONERS groaned from cold and starvation in Tsuwano ...

In the ninth month of the preceding year, the new Meiji era was ushered in. Kyoto, which had been the capital city for many long years, was replaced by Edo, whose name was changed to Tokyo. A series of reforms in domestic administration was carried out, their radical nature creating chaos in various parts of the country and sp.a.w.ning several acts of terrorism.

On Christmas in the second year of Meiji-Christmas was observed at the ura Church according to the solar calendar for the foreign residents1-women and children who had walked all the way from Urakami partic.i.p.ated in the Ma.s.s.

By now everyone in Nagasaki knew that these women were Kuros. They made no attempt to conceal the fact that they were Kiris.h.i.tans. These wives and sisters of men who had been sentenced to exile formed a procession, as though they hoped to be arrested themselves, and paraded along the Togitsu Highway toward Nagasaki, following the sh.o.r.eline until they reached the ura Church.

In the Christmas Ma.s.s, Pet.i.tjean looked into the faces of these women whose eyes were fixed on him and spoke: "You are suffering much."

The faces of women burnished by the sweat of daylong labor. The faces of women who had borne babies, nurtured children, and toiled alongside their husbands. The faces of women who, having their husbands torn from them, had nowhere but here to turn for relief.

"I'm sure you question why the Lord has granted you such trials. But please consider carefully. Without suffering, one individual can never be fully connected to another. Think of those times when your children have fallen ill. I'm sure that you and your husbands grieved and worried together and cared for that child through the night together. No doubt it was in such times that your heart and the heart of your husband were joined as one. Do you see? Suffering links people to one another. I believe that your present pain has caused you to love your husbands more than ever before. And I am certain that your husbands in faraway Tsuwano or Hagi think about you each and every day. Suffering has thus bound you as a couple together powerfully, tightly."

Tears in their eyes, the women nodded at Pet.i.tjean's words.

"I a.s.sure you that none of you is alone. That Man is always at your side. Because he, too, suffered terrible pains, he knows more than anyone your current suffering and pain. I myself ... yesterday I visited with M. Outrey of France and Mr. Parkes of England, and we joined hands and promised that we would continue our pet.i.tions to the j.a.panese government."

When he finished his sermon, Pet.i.tjean returned to the altar and resumed the Ma.s.s. The flames from the candles on the altar flickered like the wings of moths. Eventually the women began singing a hymn in voices of lamentation.

Ah, this spring, this spring!

The blossoms of the cherry shall fall.

Again next spring, The same flowers will open their buds.

Ah, Mount Shiba, Mount Shiba!

Today it is a vale of tears.

But in coming days It will be the path to deliverance.

The voices of the Urakami women singing the hymn were audible in the house where Kiku and Okane lived.

"That is so sad!" Even Okane was deeply moved with sympathy. "Here it is almost New Year's, and those women will be spending a lonely holiday. Their husbands who've been taken so far away won't have a New Year's Day or anything, will they?"

As Kiku listened to the singing of the hymn from the chapel, she thought of Seikichi.

Again next spring,

The same flowers will open their buds....

Would Seikichi be coming back next spring?

Neither Laucaigne nor Pet.i.tjean was able to obtain any information that would have answered her question. Precisely because they were foreigners, the government office in Nagasaki remained tight-lipped and would tell them nothing.

"Why don't you work here for a while? Some very important men from the government office come here for entertainment." Kiku still had fresh memories of what the madam of the Yamazaki Teahouse had said to her. "You could get to know them."

Despite the madam's invitation, Kiku had returned to the ura Church. When all was said and done, she felt an obligation to Pet.i.tjean and Laucaigne.

Even though the holiday was still a month away, the streets were lined with stalls selling New Year's decorations such as ropes made of rice straw, pine branches to decorate doorways, small pine trees with roots attached, bitter oranges, and persimmons, and the calls of the hawkers echoed through every neighborhood. There were even some houses where the families got a head-start on pounding rice for mochi, their mallets hammering away.

On the first day of the twelfth month, Father Laucaigne returned to the church, his face twisted with anger. At the doorway he shouted for Father Pet.i.tjean and the others and began screaming something in French.

After hearing Laucaigne's news, Father Pet.i.tjean raced into Nagasaki with an alarmed expression on his face.

"Padre, what has happened?" Okane asked in surprise.

Twisting up his sallow face, Laucaigne replied, "Another seven hundred Kiris.h.i.tans are being arrested! They've been ordered to a.s.semble at the Tateyama Bureau on the third."

"Seven hundred!"

"Yes."

"Then, women and children too?"

"Women and children ... yes, them too." Father Laucaigne pointed to several boats moored in Nagasaki Bay. "I suspect the government has prepared those ships to carry these seven hundred away," he muttered in a voice that was more a moan.

When Kiku heard these words, her mind was made up.

I can't help Seikichi if I stay here.

If she wanted to help Seikichi, she'd have to go to Maruyama. There was no option other than to accept the invitation from the madam of the Yamazaki Teahouse. Kiku was convinced of it. That very evening, she left the church.... Following urgent pleas from the missionaries, the French consul Dury, the American consul Mangum, and the British consul Enslie went to the prefectural office and requested an audience with Governor Nomura Sshichi. This time their protest was not based on religious grounds; rather, they argued on humanitarian grounds that it was unconscionable to exile so many men and women.

Nomura responded that he was acting on orders from the Grand Council of State that could not be disobeyed.

"These are j.a.panese internal affairs," Nomura repeated the customary cliche through his translator, Hond Shuntar, who had returned to Nagasaki after a stint in Tokyo. Shuntar had undertaken further study of French in Yokohama and now held a position with the Foreign Affairs Ministry. "I beg you not to interfere in internal matters."