Kiku's Prayer Part 28

The consuls took turns registering objections, but Governor Nomura sat with his eyes closed, saying nothing.

"The j.a.panese government has already sent 113 Christians to Chsh and Iwami." Unable to maintain his composure, U.S. Consul Mangum inquired, "Do you intend to exile similar numbers again this time?"

Finally Nomura opened his eyes and asked Shuntar to translate: "This time we'll be banishing six times that number. To be specific, the number is 729. But there are still three thousand Kiris.h.i.tans in Urakami."

"And is it your ultimate intention to exile those three thousand as well?"

"I a.s.sume that so long as they continue to believe in a religion that is banned under the laws of the country, our government will adopt stern measures against them."

Again Nomura closed his eyes and sat motionless. This stone statue of a man had no further interest in dealing with the complaints of these foreign diplomats.

Governor Nomura could take such a cold, obstinate stance not merely because he detested the interference of foreign powers in domestic matters but also because the Meiji government had decided that their policy toward religion would hinge on a revitalization of Shinto and its shrines in an effort to establish a system that unified church and state under the emperor. To recognize the Kiris.h.i.tans would violate that policy. This approach toward the foreign religion differed markedly from that of the Tokugawa shogunate, though the upshot in both cases was the banning of Christianity.

On the fourth day of the twelfth month, initially only the males among the 729 were loaded onto waiting ships. On the fifth, the families of those men who had been exiled the previous year were lodged at the Nishi Bureau, and that evening they were put onto ships.

On the seventh and the eighth, all the Kiris.h.i.tans from Nakano, Satog, Motohara, and Ieno were herded together in Togitsu, Omotaka in Nishi Sonogi District, and in Nagasaki.

It was snowing that day in Nagasaki. The women, with loads on their backs and children at their sides, were brought to the homes of the village heads in the outlying regions and then forced to walk from there to Nagasaki through the snow, the yellow and white scarves on their heads standing out like signal flags. The houses they left behind were strewn with dishes and other possessions, as though in the aftermath of utter destruction. A cow abandoned by its master lowed mournfully in the snow.

They thought perhaps they would never see their village again. In later years they referred to this banishment as "The Journey." A journey. A journey to eternity. A journey to Paradise. That's what their hymn described:

Let us go, let us go,

Let us go to the Temple of Paraiso!

And this was that Journey, they thought.

Father Villion, one of the missionaries laboring at the ura Church at the time, records this dreadful scene in his journal of the twelfth month. He writes in part: 7th. Following yesterday's official orders, it appears that the women and children were put into ships in the middle of the night. We saw several barges, their lamps aflicker, plying the harbor. We're told the rest of them will be summoned today and put onto the ships.

At four in the afternoon, the barges slowly traversed the harbor and sidled up to the steamship that was moored in the distance. Nearly fifty women sat in the center of each barge, with baggage stacked around them, and children crouched between. There were one or two officers in each barge.

Every one of the Kiris.h.i.tans was gazing up toward our church here in ura. Some made the sign of the cross. Each of the women, in a public declaration of her faith, wore the white veil that had covered her head when she was baptized.

What a scene!

Three of the barges pulled alongside a large ship flying the flag of the Satsuma domain while the remaining barges moved up to other ships. We watched all this dumbfounded. We had been left behind, unable to share the joy of confinement with them.

8th. Officers wearing two swords broke into the church. They made as if to draw their swords, but after talking together, perhaps anxious that there would be trouble for them if they wounded any foreigners, they exchanged glances with one another and departed.

At seven o'clock, the first steamship weighed anchor and left the harbor.

We understand that more than two thousand Kiris.h.i.tans are aboard those ships. At eight, the large Satsuma ship set off, and at two in the afternoon, the steamship from the Chikuzen domain also departed.

This was Father Villion's detailed description of the scene as every Kiris.h.i.tan from Urakami was transported far from Nagasaki Bay.

These believers were in fact divided into groups and taken to the Thoku region in the north, to Kyushu, to Shikoku, and to the Hokuriku region. The exiled were sent to Kchi, Takamatsu Matsue, Okayama, Nagoya, Tsu, Himeji, Hiroshima, Kagoshima, Kanazawa, Matsuyama, Wakayama, Kriyama, Daishji, f.u.kuoka, Tottori, Tokushima, Tsuwano, and f.u.kuyama.

On the seventeenth, Father Villion was finally able to visit Nakano and Ieno, which were now utterly deserted.

From the far side of the harbor I climbed the hill, then following along the edge of the basin I went down the slope and arrived in Ippongi. All around me was devastation, followed by even more devastation.

The houses were empty, their doors beaten down, with shards of bowls and plates scattered about. Not a single soul remained. I have no words to describe the appearance of this village tucked away in the mountains, its houses arranged in a ring like a circular theater stage. Every house has its doors thrown open, and not a single tatami mat is left on the floors. All that reaches my eyes is wreckage and cold death and absolute silence.

All that reaches my eyes is wreckage and cold death and silence.

The people who had lived here until the previous day now suffered aboard wave-tossed ships. Some muttered prayers; some threw up; children wept; and their mothers scolded them. This was the beginning of their "Journey."

Maruyama was lively and frenzied before New Year's Eve. In every house, preparations were made for the pounding of the ceremonial rice and the arrival of the male patrons.

As the mallets began to pound energetically in the mortars that had been placed in the s.p.a.cious earthen entryways, the middle-aged madams, the geisha, and their male a.s.sistants commenced a spirited plucking of samisens in time to the mallets and chanted:

Let's celebrate! How festive!

We pine for the strong young men Who come as the young pines bud.

It was the custom in Nagasaki to take the last rice pounded in the mortar, form it into a ball, and affix it to the central pillar of the house. They called this "pillar mochi," and on the fifteenth of the first month it was heated and eaten. Just as they finished up the rice pounding, they would also amuse themselves by scrambling to smear their faces with soot from the iron kettle. When the laughter died down, debutante geisha, accompanied by men who carried their samisens and displayed large placards with the women's names, would make the rounds of each house to convey their New Year greetings.

The morning of New Year's Day arrived after these various events had been held. The streets of Maruyama, which normally were bustling with activity, fell eerily silent during the morning hours, but the silence was broken on many streets in the afternoon by the whirring of shuttlec.o.c.k rackets, and before long, Daikoku performers, whose dances portended good fortune, as well as dancing monkeys and pipers playing the double-reed charamela, began circulating from door to door.

"Kiku." The madam of the Yamazaki Teahouse said consolingly to Kiku, who had started feverishly wiping down the kitchen on the second day of the New Year, "You don't need to work that hard from first thing in the morning. It won't be long before we'll be so busy our eyes will swim. You've got to rest up during this three-day holiday." Then suddenly she lowered her voice and said, "I want to tell you something I happened to hear. Those Kiris.h.i.tans who were exiled were divided up and sent all the way from sh in the north to as far south as Shikoku and Hokuriku."

"Who did you hear that from?"

"Our geisha Oy heard it and told me about it. She has a customer from a long time back, named Lord Hond. He's an official with the Foreign Ministry now and has ended up back here in Nagasaki. He's the one who told her."

"Ma'am?" Kiku abruptly lifted her face. "Could you ask that Lord Hond if he would bring Seikichi back from Tsuwano?"

The unexpected request put the madam in an awkward position. "Kiku, you can't be in such a hurry. There's such a thing as a right time for everything. Once they've had the Nanakusa celebration2 and eaten their herb porridge, Lord Hond and many other influential officials will start flocking in here. I'll make your request when they're in a grand mood," she said with mild reproof.

If you're off to have fun,

Tap on the doors of the Kagetsu, The Naka-no Teahouse Or the Plum Garden As you stroll around Maruyama Hond Shuntar smiled and hummed the melody to this "Yatach song" while Oy played the samisen.

Although physically he was as enormous as a stone mortar, Hond didn't hold his liquor particularly well. Once he became tipsy, it wasn't unusual for him to begin humming the Yatach melody or the Kankan Dance song with its lyrics in Chinese. Now that he had been elevated to a position of responsibility in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, those songs probably brought back fond memories of the time he spent in Nagasaki.

Suddenly Shuntar grew somber and said, "Oy, this is likely to be something off in the future, but ... I may end up going to some distant lands like America or England as an attendant to Lord Iwakura."

"America or England?" Oy gripped her samisen tightly and responded in surprise.

"Now, I'm not saying it will be right away. But this expedition will have enormous significance for the future of j.a.pan, and for my future, too. Imagine how valuable my foreign language skills will be to Lord Iwakura and the others.... And besides, I really want to see what things are like in the advanced nations."

"But if you're going to travel to those distant places, you'll be gone for five or six years, won't you?"

"Silly!" Shuntar chuckled. "These days you can travel to America in two months if you take a large steamship. I can go around the world and be back in a year or a year and a half."

Oy seemed relieved to hear that. "Then I can wait. If it's something that will help you advance in your career, then it makes me happy, too!" Then, as though she had suddenly remembered, "What's happened to Lord It? He hasn't come by yet."

"I don't want to talk about him."

"He said he was going to Tsuwano again, and that he traveled back and forth all the time between Nagasaki and Tsuwano."

"It's his job," Shuntar said, looking a little miffed. Even though they had worked at the same magistrate's office in Nagasaki, a large gulf had opened up between them: Hond had gone to Nagasaki and taken the first steps up the ladder of success in the new government, while It remained a low-ranking official who made visits to keep an eye on the exiled Kiris.h.i.tans.

"Oh. And one more thing ..." As she was putting her samisen away, Oy clapped her hands, having remembered something else she wanted to ask. "When do you think the Urakami Kiris.h.i.tans will be pardoned?"

"When? Why are you asking such a thing?"

"There's a girl from Urakami working here as a maid, and she keeps insisting that I ask you."

"Not even I know the answer to that. I can't imagine it will happen in the next two or three years," Hond muttered disinterestedly.

The fate of someone as inconsequential as the Urakami Kiris.h.i.tans held no interest for Hond, who was ascending the ladder of success step by step. They were nothing more than a gang of malcontents who had risen in opposition to the new government. Leaders of an insurrection against the new order. In Shuntar's view, at a time when it was essential for j.a.pan to mature into a modern nation so that it could stand up to foreign powers, anyone-even a mere peasant-who disrupted the system had to be punished.

Soon there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

"Ma'am?" A woman's voice called to Oy. "I've brought the sake."

When Oy heard the voice, she looked at Shuntar and said, "This is the girl I was just telling you about." Then she said, "Come in!"

Sliding the door open, Kiku came into the room, bowed, and brought in a tray from the hallway. She did everything as she had been instructed by the madam.

Shuntar stared at Kiku and thought, A remarkable face for such a young thing.

Kiku set down the tray with its sake bottles and tiny bowls, again bowed her head deferentially, and started to leave the room.

Just then a voice called out "I'm here!" and It Seizaemon poked his droopy-eyed face through the open doorway. Perhaps because of all the traveling he had to do, Seizaemon looked far more worn out than he had the last time they met.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" he said sarcastically, glancing toward Oy.

"What are you talking about? No trouble at all! Haven't seen you for a while. Let's have some drinks together tonight," Hond said with a deliberately controlled face. "Bring another tray," he ordered Kiku as she headed out of the room.

"Are you off to Tsuwano again?"

"I am. It's so cold there in the winter! A Nagasaki boy like me can hardly bear it. But compared to me, you've risen in the world by leaps and bounds now that Lord Sawa has become the foreign minister. I'm jealous!"

Once he'd aired his grievance, Seizaemon sniffed and took the sake cup handed to him. Oy poured him a drink.

"So, has the Tsuwano domain managed to change the minds of those Kiris.h.i.tans?" Hond asked. "I understand that Governor Kamei Koremi claimed he could persuade them with reason."

"High-cla.s.s gentlemen like him with their fine educations can't spout off anything besides hot air. Kiris.h.i.tan peasants who gave the magistrate such a hard time aren't going to cave in that easily. They're at their wits' end over there."

"I'm sure they are.... Say, that serving girl who just brought your tray is from Urakami. Evidently one of her relatives was arrested, and she's all worried about what's going on in Tsuwano."

"Hmmm." It Seizaemon gulped down the contents of his cup disinterestedly. But when he saw Kiku come in with another tray, his drooping eyes suddenly flashed strangely. "You're from Urakami, are you?" he asked Kiku in a soft voice.

"Yes, from Magome."

"Then are you a Kiris.h.i.tan?"

"No, we aren't Kiris.h.i.tans, sir."

"In that case, is one of your Kiris.h.i.tan relatives in Tsuwano?"

"He's not a relative. But Nakano and Magome are very close to each other, so I know a lot of people from there," Kiku deftly glossed over the details.

"Kiku," Oy interjected, "this gentleman is Lord It, and he goes frequently to Tsuwano on government business, so why don't you ask him? Lord It, this girl is engaged to a young man who was banished to Tsuwano."

Kiku's eyes flashed when she heard that It worked for the Nagasaki government, and she adjusted her posture.

"Oy!" Hond Shuntar reprimanded her with a look of disgust on his face. "Lord It and I are here tonight to renew old acquaintances. You can talk about those things later."

At the reproof from a man she loved, even Oy, known throughout the quarter as the "Snow Queen of Maruyama," flushed and hung her head. She had no choice but to signal to Kiku and have her leave the room.

Although she worked in the Maruyama district, Oy was a geisha, not a prost.i.tute. Geisha were called geiko in Nagasaki, and in local parlance they were referred to as "wildcats," possibly because the samisens they played were made from cat hides.

The geiko, unlike prost.i.tutes, were indistinguishable from women born and raised in Nagasaki, but they were reviled by litterateurs visiting from Edo for being not as quick-witted or sophisticated as their Edo counterparts. Oy, however, was an exception, skilled at both the arts and conversation, and she had a beautiful, vividly white face. When her lover Shuntar rebuked her, however, she became anything but a "wildcat," responding instead with the docility of a lamb.

"I'd like to get out of Nagasaki and go up to Yokohama or Tokyo," It grumbled. "It's boring here. They're talking as though foreign ships will start docking in Yokohama instead of Nagasaki, so we'll fall even further behind the times."

"Now, hold on a minute. Don't be in such a rush. Even if you go to Tokyo now, every important government position is monopolized by men from Satsuma and Chsh. It's not that easy for someone from another province to get his foot in the door. I'll keep my eye out for the right opportunity and try to come up with something for you."

To some degree Shuntar was fed up with It, who sniffed up snot as he moaned and whined, so Shuntar kept plying him with sake.

Eventually It, his eyes blurry from drink, staggered to his feet and headed for the bathroom. Oy followed him out of the room, and while he was relieving himself, she weighed the circ.u.mstances and went to fetch Kiku.