Disciple of the Wind (63 page)

Instead it was standing room only. A complete press corps filled the front row. All the top brass were there. The governor himself was on stage, chatting idly in the wings with the chief of police. No wonder Sakakibara was pissed about rescheduling this thing.

At the chief’s insistence, three reporters were moved to stand in the aisle so Mariko’s mother could sit front and center, her little pocket camera at the ready. Saori sat to her left, Han to her right. Mariko could see them through the door, which she’d opened just the tiniest sliver.

“You ready for this?” Sakakibara asked.

“Hell no, sir. What are all these people doing here?”

He shut the door. “Frodo, you took down the most dangerous criminal this country has ever seen. That’s the kind of thing the governor shows up for. So for once in your life, pay attention to etiquette. He’s going to give you a very deep bow. What are you going to do?”

“Bow back even deeper, sir?”

“Damn right you will. You’ll accept your medal, you’ll accept your sergeant’s tags, and you’ll do it without freaking out or getting weepy. Is that clear?”

Mariko smiled. “Yes, sir.”

He scowled at her, but it was a different kind of scowl than she’d seen from him before. “One more thing,” he said. “I suppose you think I’m pretty proud of you.”

“Are you, sir?”

“Hell, no. You did your damn job. What do you want, a cookie?”

Her smile broadened. “No, sir.”

“All right, then. Let’s get your damn medal.”

GLOSSARY

Amaterasu:
sun goddess and goddess of the universe, from whom the Emperor of Japan is said to be a direct descendant

arare:
rice crackers usually flavored with soy sauce or seaweed

Bizen:
a style of unglazed pottery

bokken:
solid wooden training sword, usually of oak

boryokudan:
the term used by police, and in the media at the behest of the police, for organized crime syndicates in Japan (literally “violent crime organization”)

bunraku:
a traditional art of puppetry using ornate, lifelike puppets

bushido:
the way of the warrior

chunin:
a midlevel lieutenant in a ninja clan (literally “middle person”)

CI:
Confidential Informant

daisho:
katana and wakizashi together, the twin swords of the samurai (literally “big-little”)

dono:
an honorific expressing great humility on the part of the speaker, more respectful than -san or even -sama

foxfire:
magical lights said to be carried by foxes or fox-spirits

fusuma:
sliding divider, usually wooden and covered with cloth or paper, usable as both door and wall

gaijin:
foreigner (literally “outsider”)

geisha:
a skilled artist paid to wait on, entertain, and in some cases provide sexual services for clientele

genin:
a low-level operative in a ninja clan (literally “low person”)

Gion:
a district in Kyoto known for its geisha

goze:
blind itinerant female, usually a musician, said to have the gift of second sight

gumi:
yakuza clan (as in Kamaguchi-gumi)

Hachiman:
god of war

hakama:
wide, pleated pants bound tightly at the waist and hanging to the ankle

haori:
a Japanese tabard (i.e., short, sleeveless jacket) characterized by wide, almost winglike shoulders, often worn over armor

hatamoto:
bannerman, the highest rank of retainer in a lord’s service

hitatare:
a robe associated with the samurai class, worn over a kimono and under armor

IAD:
Internal Affairs Division

Ikebana:
the art of flower arrangement

Ikko Ikki:
a peasant uprising, largely disorganized and only nominally Buddhist, whose political and economic influence endured for over a hundred years

Irasshaimase:
a welcome greeting said when customers enter a place of business

jizamurai:
a low-level samurai not wholly removed from farming life

Joseon:
a Korean kingdom of the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries

kaishakunin:
person charged with decapitating someone who must commit seppuku; also called the “second”

kama:
a short-hafted sickle for farming or gardening

kami:
creative natural forces, often called “spirits”

Kansai:
the geographic region around Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka, and the locus of political power for nearly all of Japanese history

katana:
a curved long sword worn with the cutting edge facing upward

kenjutsu:
the lethal art of the sword (as opposed to kendo, the sporting art of the sword)

kesagiri:
in Japanese sword arts, a downward diagonal cut to the left shoulder

ki:
life energy

kiai:
a loud shout practiced as a part of martial arts training, usually uttered upon delivering a strike

kiri:
a paulownia blossom, the emblem of Toyotomi Hideyoshi

koku:
the amount of rice required to feed one person for one year; also, a unit for measuring the size of a fiefdom or estate, corresponding to the amount of rice its land can produce

kosode:
a long garment similar to a kimono but with smaller sleeves

kote:
the wrist, as a target for sword practice

kote-uchi:
a strike to the wrist

Kura-okami:
dragon-god of rain and snow

MDA:
methylenedioxyamphetamine, a hallucinogenic amphetamine

mugi-cha:
roasted barley tea, usually served cold

naginata:
a polearm consisting of a curved sword blade on the end of a long haft

odachi:
a single-edged great sword, curved like a katana

ri:
a unit of measurement equal to about two and a half miles

ronin:
a masterless samurai (literally “wave-person”)

sama:
an honorific expressing humility on the part of the speaker, more respectful than -san but not as humbling as -dono

sarariman:
“salary man”; a man with a white-collar job

satori:
Buddhist enlightenment

seiza:
a kneeling position on the floor; as a verb, “to sit seiza” means “to meditate” (literally “proper sitting”)

sensei:
teacher, professor, or doctor, depending on the context (literally “born-before”)

seppuku:
ritual suicide by disembowelment, also known as hara-kiri

shakuhachi:
traditional Japanese flute

shamisen:
traditional Japanese lute

shinobi:
ninja

shoji:
sliding divider with rice-paper windows, usable as both door and wall

shomenuchi:
in Japanese sword arts, a downward vertical cut to the head

shonin:
the highest level of commander in a ninja clan (literally “high person”)

shoyu:
soy sauce

shozoku:
the bodysuit, hood, and mask that ninja were (erroneously) said to have worn as a sort of uniform

sode:
broad, panellike shoulder armor, usually of lamellar

southern barbarian:
white person (considered “southern” because European sailors were only allowed to dock in Nagasaki, which lies far to the south)

Sword Hunt:
an edict restricting the ownership of weapons to the samurai caste; there were two such edicts, each one carrying additional provisions on arms control and other political decrees

tanto:
a single-edged combat knife, curved like a katana, ritually used in seppuku

tengu:
a goblin with birdlike features

tetsubin:
a traditional teapot made of cast iron

Tokaido:
the “East Sea Road” connecting modern-day Tokyo to modern-day Kyoto

torii:
a gate signifying the entryway to a Shinto shrine, usually composed of two pillars connected at the top by either a lintel or a sacred rope (shimenawa)

wakizashi:
a curved short sword, typically paired with a katana, worn with the blade facing upward

yakitori:
grilled chicken served on a skewer

yakuza:
member of an organized crime syndicate; “good-for-nothing”

yamabushi:
ex-soldier dwelling in the wilds as a criminal (literally “mountain warrior”)

yoroi:
armor

yukata:
a light robe

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I
f you’ve gotten this far, you’re three books in and you’re expecting a third author’s note. Dear reader, I shall not disappoint.

The first question to address in this book is
where’s Kaida?
Don’t worry; you’ll see more of her. She had a storyline in this book all the way up to the very last draft, but in the end the manuscript was just too long. It made more sense to give Kaida her own lead role than to whittle her down along with everyone else in order to trim the book down to fighting weight. So now she’s the star of
Streaming Dawn
; I hope you catch up with her there.

The next set of questions concerns the historical stuff. Toyotomi Hideyoshi is the most important historical figure in the novel, and as you may remember from
Year of the Demon
, he was the second of the Three Unifiers, the three great lords who united Japan in the late 1500s. His predecessor, Oda Nobunaga, was a ferocious fighter who brought a third of the empire to heel before being assassinated by one of his inner circle. His successor, Tokugawa Ieyasu, sat back and waited for Hideyoshi to bring all the Japanese islands under his rule, then ousted his heirs. Ieyasu built a house on Hideyoshi’s foundation, creating a shogunate that would last more than two and a half centuries.

One of Hideyoshi’s most important political advisors was his wife, Nene. Intelligent, genteel, and politically savvy, she was by all accounts an extraordinary woman. She commanded not only Hideyoshi’s respect but also Nobunaga’s, who wrote to her fondly and even took her side when Hideyoshi complained about her. Nene and Hideyoshi exchanged letters throughout his campaigns, and when she criticized his policies, he was known to change them. It is hard to overstate what a stunning accomplishment this was; Hideyoshi was no feminist, and the Azuchi-Momoyama period was not an era of enlightened gender politics.

In some ways theirs was a strained marriage, for she bore him no children and he did take other wives and concubines. When he died, his proclaimed heir was his son by his second wife, and one factor that allowed Tokugawa Ieyasu to cement his power was that Nene backed Ieyasu, not her own husband’s son. Thus while she cannot properly be called the Fourth Unifier, she was influential for all of the other three. No other woman in Japanese history can lay claim to a similar position.

Other events in Hideyoshi’s biography are also as I portrayed them here. He did boast that he would someday conquer China, and he went so far as to invade the Korean peninsula. (The conquest was short-lived.) He was ugly as sin, but quite charming in spite of that fact. To prevent civil uprising he issued a Sword Hunt that disarmed the peasantry, and this would have included the
kama
-wielding
yamabushi
that Daigoro faces in the hills near Fuji-no-tenka.

Yamabushi
were a fixture of Japanese life in the sixteenth century. They came in two varieties, because the word is a homonym. In one sense, the
yamabushi
are “ones who lie in the mountains,” a monastic tradition of ascetic hermits. In Japan the tradition of seeking enlightenment in the mountains dates back to the eighth or ninth century and still lives on today. In the other sense (written with a different kanji for
bushi
) the
yamabushi
were “mountain warriors,” packs of soldiers,
ronin
, and martially trained monks who had turned to banditry. They plagued the countryside, and even the great daimyo were hard-pressed to manage them.

Fuji-no-tenka is fictional, but Atsuta Shrine is not. You can still visit the Shrine today; it is one of Japan’s most venerated sites. It is said to have been founded in the second century to house the remains of Prince Yamato and his fabled Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the Grass-Cutting Sword. Prince Yamato is a legendary hero whose story is told in the
Kojiki
and
Nihon Shoki
, the earliest chronicles of Japanese myth and history. His most famous episode is his defeat of the bandit kings Kumaso and Takeru, whom he ambushed in their tents by disguising himself as a serving maid. In another famous adventure, he was caught in a brush fire and survived by cutting down all the grass around him so the fire could not approach. Then he used his sword to redirect the wind, sending the flames back toward his enemies. (If it were me, I’d have called my sword Weather Dominator, not Grass Cutter, but different strokes for different folks, I guess.)

I make brief mention in the book of two other historical figures: Akechi Mitsuhide, who betrayed Oda Nobunaga, and Takeda Shingen, a daimyo renowned for his ferocity, craftiness, and general badassery. I think I need to write a book about him one of these days. Mongol grenades also appear in this book; they were real, and by Mongol standards they’re maybe the tenth-coolest thing in the arsenal. When Kublai Khan invaded Japan, he brought flamethrowers, mortars, and even primitive rockets. He also brought his death-dealing war wheels, huge iron monstrosities that were filled with black powder, ignited, then sent rolling downhill into the ranks of the enemy. Even the samurai could not stand against them; if not for a pair of timely typhoons that raked the Mongolian fleets, Japan would almost certainly have become a protectorate of the Mongol Empire.