Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

  “Are there really women like that?” Deguchi spoke mockingly, but Itō snapped back at him.

  “There are! There are women who are like that. Women who will surrender everything they have for the man they love, even if it means ruining themselves in the process.”

  He closed his eyes and seemed to be deep in thought about something. But Takahashi and Deguchi had no idea what Itō might be thinking about.

  It was at the beginning of the twelfth month of that year, when the first snows had fallen on this castle town nestled between the mountains, that Itō was summoned by an official of the Tsuwano domain.

  The official, named Chiba, stared at the palms of his hands as he held them over the hibachi and muttered, “We have problems.”

  The Japanese government had retained its policy of suppressing the Kirishitans and had banished the Urakami followers to several locations, where they were abused on a daily basis. Protests over this treatment of the Kirishitans came primarily from the British chargé d’affaires, Mr. Adams, and had reached the point that the government could no longer turn a deaf ear to his complaints.

  “There are rumors that our leaders have no choice but to launch an inquiry into the situations of the Kirishitans in each province….”

  “What will they be looking at?”

  “How the prisoners are being handled.”

  “And so …?”

  “So when you return to Nagasaki next month, would you be good enough to determine whether this rumor about inquiries is true and also to find out exactly what the foreigners are up to? Especially find out how much the foreigners know of what’s going on here in Tsuwano. After all, Nagasaki is one of those places like Yokohama where a lot of foreigners are living. I’ll see that you’re suitably rewarded.”

  “I don’t need a reward. Instead of a reward …” Itō gazed unblinking at the officer’s profile. “I have a request. Could you … could you use the influence of the domain to see if I could get a job in Tokyo sometime?”

  “Tokyo?”

  “I’ve heard that there are some men from Tsuwano who have some influence in the Ministry of Divinities,2 so couldn’t they pull some strings to get me a position in Tokyo or Yokohama?”

  Itō was thinking of the impressive standing of Hondō Shuntarō. His heart was transfixed by the hope that if he ended up in Tokyo or Yokohama, his luck might change for the better, just as it had for Hondō.

  “We’ll consider it.” Chiba nodded as he continued to warm his hands. “But given the current situation, Mr. Itō, I think it would be best if you didn’t discipline the prisoners quite so viciously for the time being.”

  Once Itō left the station, the officials in the room exchanged meaningful glances.

  “He’s a pathetic soul. Doesn’t know a thing that’s going on,” said one with a faint smile.

  Chiba picked up a pair of fire tongs, and as he scribbled something in the ashes of the hibachi, he said as though to himself, “He is pathetic, but it can’t be helped. In this world of ours, we need some men like that.”

  1. The word otome means “maiden, virgin.”

  2. The Shingishō was created in 1871 as part of the Meiji government’s attempts to shift the people’s focus from Buddhism to Shinto. A national hierarchy of Shinto shrines was created, with the Ise Shrine—closely linked to the Imperial family because their mythological ancestor, Amaterasu, was enshrined there—occupying the foremost position. The Ministry of Divinities survived for only one year, being replaced by the Ministry of Religion, but it played a role in the formation of the “State Shinto” philosophy, which was used by the government to unify the country under a supposedly “divine” emperor.

  THE THIRD WINTER

  THE OFFICIAL FROM the Tsuwano domain had been right—

  Diplomats from several foreign nations had picked up sketchy details about the abuse of the Urakami Kirishitans in the regions to which they had been exiled. The British chargé d’affaires, Francis Adams,1 began to take special interest in this matter, and immediately after the New Year holidays, he urged Sawa Nobuyoshi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to put an end to these atrocities.

  “How did Lord Sawa respond?” Itō, who returned to Nagasaki at the beginning of the year, inquired of one of his superiors at the Nishi Bureau.

  Foreign Minister Sawa had been directly involved in the exile of the Urakami Kirishitans from the outset. When he served as military proconsul of Kyushu, he summoned 180 Kirishitan peasants from Urakami Village to the Nishi Bureau, where he tried to persuade them to convert from Christianity; during his stint as governor, after conferring with Kido Takayoshi, he made the decision to banish 114 of them. Consequently, Itō’s superiors at the Nishi Bureau knew the particulars of the negotiations between Sawa and Adams.

  “Lord Sawa adamantly denied that any such things had occurred.”

  “Of course.” Itō nodded in relief. He had worried that if this problem mushroomed, even he might be implicated.

  After the New Year holidays, he decided to make a predusk visit to Maruyama, something he had not done in a long while. In earlier years, the coming of a new year had been the time to gather together all the quarter’s prostitutes and require them to trample on the sacred Kirishitan images, but by now the custom had been abolished.

  “It’s me. It’s Itō!” he called out as he entered the Yamazaki Teahouse.

  “Well!” The madam had just stepped into the entry hall. “I’d heard you were coming back last month, but I began to worry when we didn’t see anything of you.”

  “I’ve been busy. I don’t have that much time today, either.” Itō laughed, then held up the little finger of his left hand, a gesture signifying a woman, and asked, “How is she?”

  “Actually …” The madam lowered her voice. “She’s been sick in bed since yesterday.”

  “Sick?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. She’ll be back on her feet soon. Here, why don’t you come upstairs?”

  “Hmm.” Itō snorted as he climbed the creaky stairs and went into a room on the second floor.

  The room was unchanged except for the sound of an iron kettle noisily boiling water on the hibachi. This was the room where he had first pressed Kiku to the floor and clambered on top of her. Pale tears had trickled from her eyes that day….

  The moment he stepped into the room, the memory of her profile as the tears streamed down her cheeks surfaced in his mind, and he felt a pain like that of a needle jabbing into his chest.

  Even so, he knew that ultimately he was very likely to repeat the same activities again today.

  That’s the kind of man I am…. He said to himself as he plopped down on the tatami.

  He was made to wait a long while before he heard the stairs creaking again.

  Kiku’s face appeared at the doorway. Itō was startled at how colorless her face had become. Only her cheeks radiated redly, as though she had a fever.

  “I heard you’ve been ill. What happened?” Itō sat up and took a hard look at Kiku.

  “Yes, I have a slight fever.”

  “When did it start?”

  “Four or five days ago …” Kiku lied. She had been laid up with a fever for far longer than four or five days. Her body had begun to feel languid during the twelfth month. She was so weary it felt as though her body were weighted down with lead. Her fever rose every afternoon.

  “I’ll bet you’re exhausted. The madam here makes you work too hard.”

  It was not merely exhaustion. It had started at the first of the twelfth month. On her way back from a rendezvous with the Chinese man she had been set up with, she got caught in the rain and was soaked by the time she made it back to the Yamazaki Teahouse. She had caught a cold but had pushed through it and continued working.

  When she finished her customary chores of setting out saké bottles and dishes on the table, Kiku coughed two or three times. It was an unpleasantly dry cough.

  “Seikichi is doing well. Yes, that money was
very helpful for him, and he’s being treated much more compassionately now. You’ve got nothing to worry about.” It was Itō’s turn to lie as he drained one cup after another. An unanticipated wave of pity washed over him and he decided to be kind to her, even if in word only.

  “Nothing … to worry about.” Kiku nodded dejectedly. A place beyond her reach—that’s where Seikichi was.

  “Yeah.”

  When she opened a second bottle, she asked, “Would you like more?”

  “No. No more to drink.”

  Without a word, Kiku lay back on the tatami. She knew without asking what Itō had come to get from her.

  It was twilight, and it looked as though a gentle rain was falling outside. Itō rolled on top of Kiku, and as he watched her gape like a stone statue at the ceiling, waiting motionless for a man’s lust to dissipate, he felt an ineffable futility. Guilt, bitterness, and loneliness—the emotions swelled one after another through his breast.

  “Enough. That’s enough.”

  Kiku silently stood up and straightened her disheveled robes. Then she coughed. Itō caught a glimpse of reddish blood on the tissue she used to wipe her mouth.

  “Have you … have you got consumption?!” He slid away from her, crying out in an excess of fear. At the time, consumption was a dreaded, incurable disease.

  “Please … please don’t say anything to the madam. If she finds out, I’ll have to leave here.” Kiku pleaded with tears in her eyes.

  Even Itō’s heart was gripped with pain at the sadly pathetic woman’s plea.

  But aside from his pity for her, the egotism that dominated the other half of his heart made him want to have no further association with a woman suffering from consumption. Unsure which of these two conflicting emotions to give sway to, Itō could only stare in incredulity at Kiku.

  “You’ve got to take care of yourself. If you’re this sick, you should have stayed in bed and not come to be with me.” That was as much as Itō could bring himself to say right now.

  “I’m sorry, but … when will you be going back to Tsuwano?”

  “When? I just came here for the holidays, and I’ve got to go back at the end of the month.”

  “How much money do I need to come up with for Seikichi this time?” Kiku coughed another couple of times, but she was determined to find out how much money she needed to send to Seikichi. She genuinely believed that the money she gave helped in some small way to release Seikichi from some of the pains of life in captivity. And she never even dreamed that all the money she had provided to this point had been pocketed by Itō.

  “Money?” With discomfort written in his eyes, Itō retreated even further from her. “We don’t need any more money. What I gave to the officials last time was more than enough…. I don’t need your money.” He no longer had the nerve to extort even more money from this afflicted woman.

  “But … but please take at least one or two ryo.”

  “Well, I guess I could take it….”

  “Didn’t Seikichi have any messages for me?”

  Itō remembered the message Seikichi had asked him to deliver to Kiku. His pitiful message asking her to forget about a man like him and marry some good fellow …

  “Seikichi was …” Itō averted his eyes and lied, “… he was pleased by your thoughtfulness. Very pleased.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.” This was the first sign of life he had seen in her feverish face. She smiled happily.

  This was too much for him. He could bear it no longer. “I’ve got to go.” Itō scrambled to his feet and fled down the stairs. On his way out, he ran into the madam. “She’s very ill. It’s cruel of you to make her get out of bed and work!”

  Disgorging an angry outburst sufficient to dumbfound the madam, Itō slipped on his geta that waited in the entryway and hurried outside.

  While clients of the pleasure quarter still tottered about in a festive New Year’s humor, Itō’s feet carried him swiftly away, his mind preoccupied.

  As he scurried along, thoughts of what he had done and what he had just now seen tore at this craven man’s heart.

  Choking back bitter drafts of shame, self-loathing, and even self-vindication, his feet took him unawares past the Chinese settlement and toward the ocean.

  The noise of the streets and the swarms of people were, for some reason, intolerable to him in his present state of mind. Along the way he bought himself a bottle of saké and brought it up to his mouth from time to time as he walked.

  Whenever he drank himself to the point of intoxication, he was somehow able to rationalize his behavior. He could tell himself, I’m not the only man who does this. Everybody does! Or When you get right down to it, this is all the fault of those Kirishitans. If they had just laid low, I wouldn’t have had to do the things I’ve done!

  But the loneliness and the self-hatred gouged at his chest once he sobered up. Itō frequently suffered those pangs on nights in Tsuwano. When he tortured a young woman stripped naked who offered no resistance, or when he impatiently abused men and women who raised no protest, he never thought of it as something for which he was accountable. It was the exhilaration and the impulses that he could not restrain that drove him to do it.

  He walked out onto the beach. There was no wind, but still it was cold. Itō squatted down behind a scrapped boat that had been dragged onto the beach and drank straight out of the saké bottle.

  I wonder if she’s going to die.

  Kiku probably would die. Itō loved her. He loved her even though he knew that she could never love a revolting man like him. He tormented her because he loved her. And even though he tortured her, he knew better than anyone else the gemlike heart of this girl who loved Seikichi.

  Ahh, she mustn’t die!

  He grabbed a handful of sand and hurled it in anger and resentment.

  In that same moment, he caught sight of a tall foreigner walking toward him from the Ōura beach.

  He recognized the man as Petitjean. Petitjean was walking this way with his head bowed—most likely in prayer.

  Itō stiffened. Even though he had been sent to determine how much this foreigner knew about the abusive treatment of the Kirishitans in custody, for some reason Itō was frightened of being seen by him right now.

  “Ah!” But Petitjean had noticed this Japanese fellow scampering like a mouse to find a hiding place. “Ah! Lord Itō!”

  “Well, it being New Year and all, I’ve just been here having a drink at the beach. Would you care for some?”

  “I don’t drink.” Petitjean sat down beside him.

  Petitjean had just returned to Japan from Rome. Though still young, because of the quality of his earlier work he had been appointed the bishop in charge of missionary labors in Japan, and he had entrusted the care of his beloved Ōura Church to his younger companions, Fathers Laucaigne, Poirier, and Villion, with the intention of moving to Yokohama where he could consider proselytizing in Japan from a broader base.

  Seeing the beggarly face of Itō for the first time in a while brought a rush of memories back to his recollection. Petitjean remembered this minor official slinking around the Ōura Church to spy on them and setting up camp in the neighboring Nikkanji Temple to keep watch on their movements. But somehow or other, he could not bring himself to hate this vulgar, pusillanimous fellow.

  He’s a rogue, but he’s no devil, he often told his brethren.

  “Lord Itō, I thought you were in Tsuwano?” Petitjean asked, puzzled. And he sought some means to gather information about the Urakami Kirishitans from this fellow.

  “At the very least, I always insist on being able to celebrate the New Year in Nagasaki. But it’s painful to think I’m going to have to return to that village way off in the mountains. Of course, that’s all because those Kirishitans are so obstinate!” Itō said with a sarcastic smile.

  Petitjean’s face suddenly lit up with delight. “So they remain obstinate, do they? They’re still following the Kirishitan teachings, are
they?” Nothing could have made Petitjean happier. Every piece of news he received regarding the Kirishitans banished to various parts of Japan was distressing, dark, and painful. Tsuwano was not the only place where the faithful were suffering torture.

  One hundred seventy-nine were confined in Hiroshima. The food they were given amounted to just over three and a half ounces per day. As a result, many had apostatized, and forty had died.

  The 117 packed off to Okayama also suffered starvation from the quarter ounce of rice given to them each day, and in addition they were forced into painful physical labor, leading to eighteen deaths and fifty-five apostasies.

  Of the eighty-four held in Matsue, eighty-one had abandoned their faith.

  Reports on the sufferings of the faithful that were conveyed one after another to Petitjean and Laucaigne sometimes provoked feelings akin to despair. But just now, whether in sarcasm or as a joke, Itō had claimed that “those Kirishitans are so obstinate!”

  That meant that even during this frigid winter, there still were some in Tsuwano who had not abandoned their principles and departed from the faith.

  “Lord Petitjean.” With the bottle of saké to his mouth, Itō suddenly looked serious. “There’s something I want to ask you.”

  “What is it?” Itō’s face was so earnest that Petitjean nodded.

  “You Kirishitans … why do you put up with all this meaningless suffering?” And then, as though spewing out the words, he asked, “And do you hate me? With these hands of mine I’ve beaten and abused and brought pain to many Kirishitans. But they’ve endured it all. Despite their daily sufferings, they won’t utter a word of apostasy. Why is that? Why are they so stubborn? If they’d just for appearance’s sake say the words ‘I apostatize’ … on that very same day they could return to a comfortable life like any ordinary person.”

  With his eyes closed, Petitjean moved his lips almost imperceptibly. It appeared he was praying for each of the prisoners who currently were groaning in Tsuwano.

  “God … God never does any evil to us.” The whispered words seeped like a moan from Petitjean’s lips. Why had God given such painful trials to these peasants from Urakami? Why didn’t God use his power to rescue them? Did God ignore those who suffered for his sake?