Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

  “Lord Itō will be coming back to Tsuwano soon. When he gets here, your little box won’t be the worst of your problems.”

  Takahashi and Deguchi seemed to be cut from the same cloth as Itō Seizaemon, and they behaved like his underlings whenever he paid a visit from Nagasaki.

  After suffering five days of torment in this narrow box, Seikichi, covered in excrement and barely half alive, was dragged out and returned to the cell with the others. Takahashi scrambled to cover his face with a cloth to keep him from dying of trauma when the light of the sun suddenly struck him. That is how wasted his body had become.

  “Think maybe that had a little effect?” Deguchi said hatefully, his eyes beady like a badger’s.

  Sen’emon and the others cared for Seikichi throughout the night.

  Because he was still young, Seikichi somehow recovered, but the next man crammed into the box, a man from Ieno named Wasaburō, was older than Seikichi and had not been in good health for some time, so the men worried what the outcome might be.

  “I’m not so sure Wasaburō can survive in a place like that.” Sen’emon and Kanzaburō, having heard from Seikichi about the torment of the three-foot box, conferred with the other men about possible steps they might take to help Wasaburō.

  No one had any good ideas. They recognized that pleas to the officials or the guards would be of no avail.

  “We can’t die without making it back to Urakami.” With closed eyes, Sen’emon mumbled as though to himself. In his heart he was praying fervently to be blessed with a stroke of inspiration. “We can’t let Wasaburō die.”

  He was not alone in his feeling. Wasaburō was docile and self-effacing, and he was kind to everyone and loved by all.

  “Is there any way we could slip out of here … and sneak over to the box?”

  No one had an answer. It didn’t seem possible.

  For the entire day, Sen’emon sat in a corner of the room hugging his knees and sunk in thought. Everyone knew what their leader was brooding over, so they left him alone and did not try to speak to him.

  Near evening—

  Abruptly he spoke. “Kunitarō! You had a copper coin, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. Did you want me to give to a guard and ask him to help?”

  “Naw,” Sen’emon shook his head. “D’you think you could use the coin as a tool to make a knife?”

  He explained himself. Back in Nakano, every now and then a farmer would dig up a knife-shaped rock in the fields. They assumed that people in former times had ground these rocks and used them as knives.

  “So when we’re taken out for questioning, I think we should be able to pick up a roof tile from the courtyard. We’ll use the copper coin to grind it and make it into a knife. Once we have a knife, we can cut through these floorboards and dig a hole to the outside.”

  “That’s too dangerous!” Several voices rose in opposition. If an officer or a guard were to discover what they were doing, they’d be in serious trouble. Their food rations would be cut back even further, and they might be subjected to severe torture. Several of the men were opposed to the plan.

  “I don’t suppose you have any other ideas, do you? Or are you saying you just want to leave Wasaburō in that box to die?” Seikichi retorted, casting a sharp glance toward the cowards. “I know the pain of being in that box! We can’t abandon Wasaburō!”

  Seikichi’s entreaty led to the adoption of the hard-liner plan.

  Taking care not to be seen by the officials and guards, the men swiped a roof tile and carved it into a stone knife. To drown out the noise of their efforts, several of the men, by design, sang in loud voices.

  The knife was finished. Taking turns, they hacked away at the floorboards. That was the easy part. By the third day they had made a hole large enough to poke one finger through; then, squeezing one hand through the gap, they managed to pull up the floorboard and commenced to dig out the soil beneath the wall of their cell. Somehow or other they managed to create a tunnel to the outside.

  “Sen’emon!” That night, each man contributed the meager allotment of rice he had received for that day to make two rice balls, which they gave to Sen’emon. “Give this to Wasaburō to eat.”

  In the darkness Sen’emon slid down beneath the floor and crawled out through the hole they had excavated.

  The night in Tsuwano was icy cold, and the mountains and houses were all darkened. The guards appeared to be unconcerned and noticed nothing.

  When he reached the three-foot cell, Sen’emon pressed his face against its wall and whispered, “Wasaburō! Wasaburō! It’s Sen’emon. It’s me!”

  He sensed a faint stirring inside the box.

  “I know this is hard for you. But you’ve got to pray and hold on just a little longer. I’m giving you some rice balls through the hole up top.”

  There was no response.

  “What’s happened to you? Wasaburō!”

  “Yes.” His voice was feeble. It was clear that he had been worn down.

  If he’s left like this, he’ll die!

  As Sen’emon turned from the three-foot cell and started back toward the tunnel, Wasaburō’s voice still lingered in his ears. He muttered to himself, Lord Jezusu! If this goes on any longer, Wasaburō will die!

  There was still some time before dawn. The darkness was thick, Mount Aono towered blackly to the rear, and the cold wind was brutal. But Sen’emon couldn’t bring himself to return to the others. He cut across the frozen garden of the temple and came to the bamboo fence that enclosed the compound. He wanted somehow to get outside….

  Please help me, Lord Jezusu!

  When he pushed gently at the gate, it creaked softly and moved. The careless guards had neglected to secure the latch.

  With quiet steps Sen’emon climbed down the hill. There was no danger of anyone seeing him at this hour, but he feared that a dog, hearing his footsteps, might begin barking. If a dog barked, someone might wake up.

  Sen’emon decided to go to the Hōshin-an where the apostates were lodged. He knew that the eight apostates felt very ambivalent toward those who still clung to their principles.

  But he had to enlist their aid in order to help Wasaburō. Sen’emon’s own feelings were conflicted right now.

  Since the Hōshin-an was a nunnery, it had no imposing walls. Even so, he sustained a few cuts on his arms and legs from the hedge as he pushed his way into the courtyard.

  “Motosuke! Motosuke!” He placed his mouth up to a crack in the storm shutters and called out, but since he spoke softly from the fear of being overheard, there was no response.

  “Motosuke … !”

  He heard a cough; apparently someone had awakened. But perhaps having heard Sen’emon’s voice, there was silence for a few moments.

  “Who … who is it?”

  “It’s Sen’emon. Can you open this shutter?”

  The shutter opened a crack, and two dark faces peered out at him.

  “It really is Sen’emon! Did you escape?”

  “No, I didn’t. Wasaburō is close to death. They’ve stuck him in a little box they call the three-foot cell and he’s covered in his own filth….”

  Lowering his voice, Sen’emon described the agony of the tiny cell and Wasaburō’s grim condition.

  “And we … we can’t do anything to help him. I thought maybe if you could share a little of your food … that’s what I’ve come to ask for. Motosuke, Satoichi—you’re both from Urakami, too. Can you think of some way to help?”

  The other six men had awakened and listened quietly to what Sen’emon had to say. No one uttered a word in reply.

  “It’s going to start getting light…. I’ve got to go back.”

  “Would you … would you take this to him?” Someone stood up in the darkness and held out several rice cakes to Sen’emon. “This is all I’ve got tonight. But if you can come back tomorrow, I’ll save up some food to give you,” the man whispered….

  But Sen’emon knew full well that Wasaburō??
?s debilitation was growing more critical with each passing day. Wasaburō could evidently no longer swallow the food that the apostates at the Hōshin-an were willing to provide out of pity.

  When Sen’emon returned through the passage they had dug, he reported in a lifeless voice, “He’s not going to make it. He can’t even answer me anymore.”

  On the twentieth day after Wasaburō was put into the three-foot cell—

  A guard came to summon Sen’emon: “The man says he wants to talk to you.”

  Sen’emon raced to the cell, where Wasaburō’s emaciated appendages poked out from under a straw rug.

  His body was soiled revoltingly with the feces he had to live with every day. Sen’emon swallowed hard at the extreme wretchedness of his friend.

  “Sen’emon,” Wasaburō pleaded in a faint voice. “Don’t let them burn my body, OK …? When the rest of you are executed, please carry my body to that same spot….”

  “I understand,” Sen’emon nodded through his tears. “Even if we die, all of us from Urakami will be together in Paraíso. Our ancestors are waiting for us there.”

  Let us go, let us go,

  Let us go to the Temple of Paraíso.

  Though it’s called the Temple of Paraíso …

  Knowing that Wasaburō would soon die, the other men began to sing from their cell inside the temple. The officials and guards said nothing, even as their melancholy voices grew gradually louder.

  When the officers began to carry Wasaburō’s corpse out of the boxlike cell, the nineteen remaining prisoners, aware of their friend’s dying wish, began to shout at them. One man named Kunitarō became particularly desperate and continued to argue with the officers who yelled and barked orders at him.

  But all their protests were in vain. Two days later, Wasaburō’s body was carted off to some unknown location, and no one had any idea where it had been disposed of.

  Overnight the three-foot cell was transformed into the most painful and frightening location the remaining nineteen men could imagine. Being placed in there signified death. And it was a death in which a man breathed his last in horrible pain and smothered in his own excrement.

  The next to be cast into the three-foot cell was a man named Yasutarō. Kanzaburō, Kunitarō’s second son, wrote in his reminiscences:

  This man Yasutarō was a man of faith and humility who did all the nasty jobs that other men hated to do, and he often reduced his own ration of food in order to feed it to someone weak in his fides….

  Yasutarō was periodically dragged from his three-foot cell to the courtyard amid the falling snow, and attempts were made to force him to apostatize. He, too, wasted away, sullied with diarrhea.

  This time it was Kanzaburō’s turn to make use of the tunnel they had dug to give encouragement to Yasutarō.

  I pulled up the floorboards in our cell … and made my way outside, reaching the three-foot cell sometime after midnight, Kanzaburō recorded. I called out, “Yasutarō! Yasutarō!” one or two times until he responded in a faint voice. I said, “Being in this little cell must be awfully lonely for you,” but he answered, “I’m not lonely between ten o’clock and twelve. Just after ten, a woman in a blue kimono with a blue scarf around her head, looking just like the pictures of Santa Maria, comes and tells me stories, so I’m not lonely at all then.” But he told me not to mention this to anyone while he was still alive. Three nights later the moon was truly beautiful. I think he was a real saint.

  It was not long before Yasutarō, reduced to only skin and bones, breathed his last. The remaining eighteen prisoners, each absorbed in his own personal thoughts, gazed down at the wasted corpse laid out on a straw rug. Some were deeply moved; others felt only fear. A few chewed on their lips in anger and remorse, while some were gripped with apprehension.

  Around this time Itō Seizaemon resurfaced in Tsuwano. He had not seen the Urakami Kirishitans in quite a while, and he greeted them with uncharacteristic gentleness: “I’ve brought you a present.” He pulled a heavy cloth bag from the pocket of his kimono. “Do you know what this is …? It’s some of the soil from Urakami. It’s soil from your hometown of Urakami. Give it a whiff. You’ll recognize it.”

  There was no doubt that the soil that spilled from the cloth bag had come from Urakami. Having cultivated this soil for so many long years, these farmers recognized it instinctively.

  “Go ahead and scoop it up in your hands. No need to hesitate.”

  After the first man responded to Itō’s offer and touched the soil with trembling hands, the rest of the men excitedly reached their hands out, too. They brought it up to their noses and kept their eyes shut for a long, long while.

  Itō glanced around at the faces of the Kirishitans with a broad smile and asked, “Is there a Seikichi here?” When Seikichi responded, he said, “I see. So you’re Seikichi, are you …? Do you happen to know a place called the Yamazaki Teahouse in Maruyama?”

  “I certainly don’t.”

  “Don’t lie to me. A maid that works there, name of Kiku … she’s very worried about you…. She says she wants you back in Urakami soon. I wouldn’t make something like that up. I’m sure you’d like to smell the soil of your home again, wouldn’t you? Or would you prefer to die in your own shit in that little box?”

  Seikichi’s face flushed. Itō’s comments were his usual blend of part aggravation and partly his habit of preying on the men’s weaknesses, but this time, for once, his words appeared to have some impact.

  Several days later, six of the eighteen men quietly declared their apostasy. Ultimately they were defeated by the smell of the soil of Urakami and their fear of the three-foot cell.

  1. The smallest unit of Japanese currency at the time, mon were coins cast in copper or iron. They were replaced by the yen in the early 1870s.

  TWO KINDS OF LOVE

  MITSU SAW SOMETHING unusual at the Gotōya one day. She ran across Kumazō sobbing in a corner of the kitchen.

  It happened on the same morning that all the Urakami Kirishitans, including women and children, were driven from their homes and scattered to various locations.

  The rout had been the subject of gossip at the Gotōya since the previous day. It started to snow that morning, and throughout Nagasaki, people watched as Kirishitan women, their heads covered with yellow or white scarves to shield them from the snow, headed up the hill toward the Nishi Bureau carrying belongings on their backs and leading their children by the hand.

  “I wonder if your family is going to be OK,” Oyone said sarcastically to Mitsu. “They live in the same town of Urakami …”

  “But why are those people so pigheaded?” the Mistress sighed. “They lose their houses and their land, and they’re exiled to some unfamiliar place…. Don’t they see what they’re giving up here?”

  Mitsu and Tome, bracing themselves against the cold, climbed up on the poles used for drying laundry and tried to watch as the steamships bobbing in the harbor took on these refugees and departed. As a native of Urakami herself, Mitsu felt unbearably sad for them. She was especially overcome with pity when one of the shop clerks reported that he overheard a young child, who had no idea what was happening, whining incessantly as her mother led her by the hand along the snowy road to the Nishi Bureau: “Mom! Let’s go home! Let’s go home!!”

  The next morning when Mitsu went into the kitchen to perform her normal chores of preparing breakfast and cleaning, she discovered Kumazō beside the hearth, his back toward her, weeping. When he realized that Mitsu was standing behind him, Kumazō fled outside.

  Mitsu went out to the well. Her burdens had been made somewhat lighter since Kumazō came to the shop, as he would draw the water from the well and carry it in buckets to the kitchen, but today he had not brought any water in.

  Kumazō turned his face away from Mitsu as she approached. She said nothing but picked up the bucket of water that Kumazō had drawn so she could carry it to the kitchen herself.

  “Mitsu!” Kumazō, his head still bowed,
muttered abruptly. “You saw me crying just now, didn’t you?”

  Mitsu could only nod her head. Then Kumazō said in a raspy voice, “Could you please not tell anybody else?”

  “I won’t.”

  They said nothing further for a time. Then Kumazō suddenly broke the silence. “Mitsu, I’m a Kirishitan from Nakano. But I was scared to be sent off to some distant land, so when the boats were leaving, I ran away. I went to the officials and told them I’d give up my Kirishitan beliefs. So here I am, a ‘pardoned’ apostate! This morning, they told me that the people from my village of Nakano and from Motohara had all been put on those ships in the bay that headed out to sea…. And I … and I’m left here alone!” He spat the words out, clutching to his chest the bucket he had taken from Mitsu’s hands.

  Mitsu told Kumazō’s secret to no one. She didn’t even reveal it to her friend Tome. As a result, an unseen connection developed between Mitsu and Kumazō.

  He really shouldn’t punish himself so much….

  Since she wasn’t a Kirishitan herself, Mitsu couldn’t really understand why Kumazō felt so guilty about abandoning his Kirishitan faith. When she mentioned this to Kumazō, he said sadly, “You wouldn’t understand,” and turned away to swing his ax into a piece of firewood.

  Mitsu stared at the back of her forlorn friend and felt tremendous sorrow for him. Seeing someone or something miserable or unfortunate was usually more than she could handle.

  The New Year came around again.

  “Kumazō, I’m sorry.” Mitsu felt somehow guilty toward Kumazō; although he also was from Urakami, he had no place to go home to for the holiday.

  “Nobody’s left in Nakano, so I can’t go back there. But I’d like to go to Ōura just once,” he responded.

  “To Ōura?”

  “Yes. I wish I could at least go to the church there and tell Santa Maria how sorry I am for my weak resolve. Mitsu, would you slip away with me and go to Ōura? And could you keep watch while I tell Santa Maria I’m sorry?”

  She empathized with Kumazō’s agony, and Mitsu realized she could use this opportunity to see Kiku again.