She did not come near Ikkanshi.
He busied himself with the old blade, holding to his belief in its life-giving properties. He had reached the stage to use the
uchigimori,
which is the finest of all. He did not have one, and so had to ask the ferryman to bring it. He explained carefully: less than an eighth of an inch thick, it must be reinforced with paper backing. For this he would use not water as the lubricant, but
nugui,
an oil, with fine particles in it. This would darken and highlight the grain, which he could see was going to be very fine.
He knew the basket maker would arrive now that the ferries were running, and he was not wrong. There came a day when Bamboo stepped off the boat as jovial as ever and the children and women flocked to him. Ikkanshi saw this from the High Place where he was practising the cuts. He stopped the
kata
and folded the bag over his weapons and made his way back to his workshop. He had just sat on his stool when he sensed the man in the doorway.
‘Ikkanshi-san,’ he heard.
He sat very still.
‘Good afternoon,’ the basket maker said.
‘Konichi-wa.’ ‘Konichi-wa,’
the sword polisher replied, and turned his upper body and head to see him bow deeply. He stood to return the bow, and then wordlessly set his back to him and once more squatted on his stool.
‘How has your winter been?’ the basket maker asked.
‘Very productive. I have now progressed to the very finest stone and oil.’
‘Then you are near the end?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps not.’
There was a soft laugh at the end of this, which annoyed him. It was as if this simple man with his powerful masters were
laughing at the notion of Ikkanshi’s free will. The sword polisher ventured on. ‘Forgive my wandering, however. You did not come to chat about my shopping list.’
The man moved further into the room. He sighed as he lifted his wicker pack off his back, the heavy sigh of the man who works by hand. Ikkanshi rose to get him tea. They understood each other. It was only that the peddlar was forced to bring these messages, and was too proud to admit that he was forced. He pretended to be as important as those who sent them.
‘I have letters for you,’ he said, gratefully taking the tea from his cupped hands. ‘It is good news, I believe. You will be given a great opportunity.’ He gave an eager grin, nodding. To him, Ikkanshi was the man who had been drummed out of the Imperial Army for his sympathies with the British, and now he had a chance to redeem himself. ‘And I am requested to bring a written response to these letters.’
Ikkanshi sank onto the cushion. He took the rake to the coals and put on another piece of the wood he had painstakingly collected in the bushes, throughout the winter. The basket maker’s strategy was clever, because it made it necessary for Ikkanshi to acknowledge that he’d received the letters, or else to reveal to the basket maker that he did not want to give a response.
Ikkanshi took the envelopes from his hands.
‘It may take me rather a long time,’ he cautioned.
‘Never fear,’ the basket maker said. ‘I have two hours to pass before the ferry leaves this evening. And the children have asked for so many toys. If I could sit with you I will use my time profitably, as you do, and make them.’
Ikkanshi sat too, with his tea. The basket maker asked for water, which Ikkanshi gladly dipped for him out of the bucket. He used to fashion little whirligigs out of bamboo. They were made from a piece of hollow bamboo the boys could roll between their palms and a propeller shape that fited inside, that would take off and fly a few feet. Now they wanted bomber planes.
‘More difficult!’ said Bamboo. And there they were, two men in the prime of life, as they say, sitting quietly together as old friends might, with cups of tea and a banner of light lying on the earthen floor. Neither was exactly military and neither was exactly a prisoner. But one appeared to be the guard of the other.
The first letter was from the
katanakaji.
He inquired after the
katanatogi’s
health and then after the blade, in that order, so that Ikkanshi understood at least his universe was in working order.
The second was from Hiroshi.
He had no idea how Hiroshi had discovered his whereabouts. Yet, he realised, as he looked at the familiar blocky black
kanji
– familiar because they had sat together through so many classes, desk beside desk, as boys and then as young men – he had been expecting it.
He wasted no time in pleasantries, but said that Ikkanshisan must know Oshima had been sent back to Germany. That the society was superb and he would have enjoyed the music. When they had met in Kobe he had been in Japan for nearly one year, but now, with changes in the government policy, he was summoned again to Berlin. He was Ambassador and the rulers in Germany were pleased. Together they would lead their countries to a great victory and the world to a great new order.
He had, he wrote, a very special honour for his friend. He recalled his saying that he had several fine old blades in his possession and that he was working on restoring them. He had the highest respect for Ikkanshi’s position, and understood his desire to stand back from politics, that perhaps it was fitting for one who was a great artisan. But he also trusted that an officer such as he had been could never truly abandon the cause of his country and his Emperor.
He was now in a position where he wished for a special blade to present to the German commander, the Führer himself, to honour the alliance of Japan and Hitler’s countries and in recognition of their great personal friendship.
He left no question here, but assumed that Ikkanshi would provide a good blade.
He would arrange to pick it up once Ikkanshi had finished with it.
And it was signed, ‘Your friend, Hiroshi’.
Ikkanshi sat, stunned, as the basket maker wove his magic. He watched the other man’s clever fingers and envied the peace of his concentration. The basket maker’s eyes never left the flying strips of bamboo, yet he hardly saw them: his gaze was that of a man who has memorised every step of his task, and committed it to a place inside his body where the essentials, like breathing, swallowing, hunger and thirst, live. He did not have to think; thinking would have made him falter.
Ikkanshi felt a second flush of envy, this one hotter and more lasting than the first, about society in Berlin. This, Hiroshi had wanted him to feel. Friend? That was the second use of the word. Was he his friend? They had together been subjected to an arduous, spirit-breaking training. They had been beside one another. One of them – in fact Ikkanshi – had been stronger than the other, and had been a better student. But who had the other been? And had Oshima any idea what had been inside of his protector during that time? Yet he called upon this old loyalty, and made an extraordinary request.
But Ikkanshi himself had called upon that same old loyalty.
The difference was that Ikkanshi petitioned: he knew his power was negligible, or nonexistent. Whereas Oshima, the younger one, now commanded. Or imagined he did.
Bamboo work was done by people disdained by society: handicapped people, ill people. But it was beautiful, in a secondary way, which was the best way. Its beauty was due to the fact that the product was made to be useful.
What was the use of the sword?
As he watched the bamboo bend and curl, the polisher wondered why he had not chosen for the object of his contemplation something as harmonious, as humble, and as delicately strong, as the basket. The bamboo of its construction was supple and
light. It allowed itself to be bent to any purpose. It waited, as did the basket maker, for a human need to be evident: carrying home shells that have been harvested from the sea, for instance, fitting against the
ama’s
hip. Then it complied with the weaver’s invention. A thousand other uses for baskets came to mind. A thousand different expressions of the strength, the lightness and ingenuity of the bamboo.
The sword was so unforgiving, so harsh, so demanding of its maker. But it was of the highest stature. And it was in his family, his history, his clan. He began to see this as eerie. This is what had separated him from Keiko those years before, or had at least made him feel superior, apart from her. The sword divided. But not always for loss.
Katsukin ken;
the sword that brings life, not takes it.
Ikkanshi’s father and his father’s father and tens of fathers before them had been sword polishers. He had been raised in reverence of the blade. Always since his apprenticeship, his eyes had been fixed on the sharp edge of steel, the way the light flared on its hard surface. When the decision had been made that he should go, at seventeen, to the Officer’s Training School in Tokyo, he thought he had put his sword polishing behind him. The grinding day-long classes, the physical training at dawn and dusk, the foreign languages (not English – that was for middle school), the long hours of drill, swimming, kendo, musketry. And they ate so little. He remembered a constant gnawing hunger. The school at Ichigaya had been harsh. Hiroshi and he had counted themselves lucky to have been finished with their training before the rebellion; they had been in the service, abroad. How lucky, too, he had been to be born an Ikkanshi, with the mantle of
katanatogi.
How timely had been his father’s death; it was as if he had deliberately provided a way for Tadatsune to withdraw from the military. To come to the summer island; he had thought himself safe there.
Very well, if he were not safe, then he was in danger and would behave accordingly. He would be cunning and finally, of necessary, he would make a sacrifice of himself. That would be preferable to polishing a sword for Hitler.
He contemplated this and felt at ease with it. But then he realised that his actions had bearing on other lives.
There was Keiko, for instance.
There was Vera.
Could they keep her safely with them, on this island, if the police came?
There was Hamilton Drew, her father. When would he come? Because he had to come, he too would be flushed out of Asia with all the other white people.
All of this he thought while the basket maker sat before him, and he held Hiroshi’s letter in his folded hands. It was a long journey Ikkanshi’s mind made during that hour, and one that brought him right back to where he was. Hiroshi had asked for an acknowledgement.
‘You must tell him that Ikkanshi has received the letter,’ he said.
The basket maker bowed and replied, ‘Perhaps I have not made myself clear, I have been asked to bring a written response.’
‘Very well,’ Ikkanshi said, sighing. ‘I will write that down.’
As he rose to fetch his writing box, the basket maker spoke again to his back.
‘Is that the response you will write?’
‘It is.’
‘But,’ persisted the man, ‘I have been asked to bring a response, not an acknowledgement.’
Ikkanshi supposed his masters had expected a completion date.
Had he not known him better, he’d have said the basket maker was insolent. As it was, he realised the basket maker felt powerful toward him, powerful because he served masters who had absolute power. Ikkanshi felt a slight chill. But he was more than a match for the basket maker, and well acquainted with his masters.
‘I appreciate that that is what you have been asked for,’ Ikkanshi said.
The basket maker sat for a moment; his gaze on the floor. He tried humility next. ‘It will not be well for me if I bring this acknowledgement, without response.’
Ah yes, Ikkanshi did remember this. All through the High Command such pressure was brought to bear. It will not go well for you if you warn Tokyo that their ideas are false, that their hopes will be in vain, that the grand scheme of the Imperial Forces would lead all Japan to ruin. The instructions were given out from the upper echelons to their men around Europe: do not tell us what we don’t want to know. Tell us only what we want to know. And so Japan’s forces ground on in their innocence and barbarity.
Would he be the one?
‘Very well,’ he said, because of course he did not want to bring ruin on the poor basket maker. He took out pen and paper. He scratched out a response, and folded it inside another paper. It would not truly satisfy them, but perhaps it was sufficiently ambivalent to avoid disaster.
He presented it to the basket maker with a bow.
‘It is nearly time for the ferry to depart.’
The basket maker was gentle now, as if he hadn’t brought Ikkanshi nearer a doom that he had felt approaching for some years. Perhaps the doom had nothing to do with this simple man who was only trying to survive.
Or perhaps there were no simple men any more.
He had written only to Hiroshi. ‘Message received. I am well and working on a sword of the Shinto style made by Nagasone Kotetsu. My father left it to me, the last of his works uncompleted. It must be for a great man. I am not certain any of the present intended would deserve it.’
And he had signed it only, ‘Ikkanshi’.
The rest would happen in whatever way it had to happen.
Ikkanshi watched the basket maker as he took his leave. The boys ran to him asking for aeroplanes. And he answered them kindly and so they ran along beside him. He set down the backpack that carried his tools near the well. And although he had
been called to make creels and to repair the colanders and the fishing baskets, he produced a plane with a propeller that had a pocket to hold stones. The children fed the plane stones, made it fly and watched it drop them.
10
Shi-ho-giri
Four direction cuts
That fourth summer on the island, Tamio was there amongst the boys, thinner, and darker, somehow, for his winter in the outdoors. His skin seemed almost to have been burned. Vera wanted to run her fingers over it from her first sight of him. She knew, and he knew, that they would begin again. It had marked them, and left a thirst.
If it was a good day for deep diving, they worked together. They did not speak, then. But they watched each other, and felt pleasure in what they saw, Tamio from the boat, and she from the water. At the end of the day they were salty and sun-parched. They trudged from the boats to the well and turned homeward without a word. But they knew when and where they would meet. At night they crossed the island with the express purpose of making love. Vera would part from Hana, touching her hand gently, and go down to the beach, in the dark, to sit beside Tamio’s boat, at the far end of the path. He would always be there, cleaning it, or folding his ropes. Small lights would turn the air a greenish black along the water. They would go back away from the light, on the path past the Lost Lake, to the other side.