Kiku's Prayer: A Novel

  Those recollections twirled inside her head like images in a revolving lantern.

  She stumbled up the stone steps of the Nambanji. Looking very much like a porcelain doll, she pushed open the door and went into the sanctuary.

  Tiny flames fueled by rapeseed oil glimmered at the spot where the Eucharist was laid out. When she had worked here, one of her jobs had been to refill the oil so that the flame was never extinguished.

  She dropped at the base of the woman’s statue and coughed. A spot of blood tinged the hand she held to her mouth. With wide eyes the statue of the Blessed Mother watched Kiku as she coughed.

  Well, I’ve ended up here again. After all, you’re the only person I can talk to about Seikichi. Between coughs, she murmured to the Blessed Mother. I hated you, you know. Seikichi thought more of you than he did of me. I was jealous of you and tried to draw his heart in my direction.

  She coughed violently.

  But it didn’t work. I lost everything. Unlike you, this body of mine has been repeatedly, totally violated.

  Tears poured from Kiku’s eyes as she railed at the statue. They were the same as the tears she shed the day she was raped by Itō.

  I can’t … I can’t be close to Seikichi ever again. But I really did love him!

  She coughed up blood and collapsed with her face toward the floor. It was quiet in the chapel, and outside the snow fell noiselessly. When the sound of her coughing ceased, her body no longer moved.

  Translucent tears just like those of Kiku welled up in the large eyes of the Blessed Mother. The tears spilled down her cheeks and dampened her robes. She wept for Kiku, who lay facedown, motionless; she wept for this woman who had loved one man with everything she had; she wept for Kiku, who had given all for her lover, even to the point of defiling her own body.

  I … I really did love him!

  The Blessed Mother heard Kiku’s cry distinctly. With tears pooling in her large eyes, the statue of the Immaculata nodded in strong affirmation.

  But unlike you, this body of mine has been repeatedly, totally violated….

  In response to Kiku’s moan filled with such sorrow and pain, the weeping Blessed Mother shook her head vigorously.

  No. You are not violated in the least. Even though you gave your body to other men … you did it for just one man. The sorrow and misery you felt at those times … has cleansed everything. You are not the least bit defiled. You lived in this world in order to love, just as my son did.

  Stretched out on the floor, Kiku’s body was depleted of all energy and did not even stir.

  This snow will probably continue all night long. This much snow will purify everything stained, everything foul. Ultimately the streets of Nagasaki will become a land of pure whiteness. And just as this pure white snow will conceal all the blemishes and lewdness and pains and sins of humanity, your love will obliterate all the filth from the men who have touched you.

  Then the Blessed Mother urged Kiku: Come, fear not. Come with me….

  Time passed in utter silence. Outside the church, the large flakes of snow continued to fall.

  When Petitjean came to the chapel to pray after darkness fell, he discovered Kiku collapsed on the floor directly beside the altar. The area around her down-turned face was darkly stained with the immense quantities of blood she had disgorged, and her body had already stiffened and drawn its last breath. The hemorrhaging from her lungs had suffocated her.

  Petitjean summoned Okane and her husband and brought Laucaigne and the other priests into the chapel. Okane’s husband hurried through the snow to notify the Nishi Bureau.

  The candles on the altar were lit. Although Kiku had not been a Kirishitan, Petitjean and the others priests offered the Kirishitan prayer for the dead on her behalf.

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. Grant her eternal rest, O Lord,” Petitjean recited, moving his lips faintly. “Et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescat in pace. And may eternal light shine upon her, and grant her eternal rest.” As he whispered the Latin words of the Requiescat in pace, an unbearable grief clenched at Petitjean’s heart.

  He knew that Kiku had loved Seikichi. He also knew how much she had suffered because Seikichi had been locked away in distant Tsuwano. And he felt as though he understood why she had died here before this altar, soaked through like a stray cat and coughing up blood.

  But then he recalled the conversation he had held a few days ago on the beach with Itō, who had wondered what sort of meaning God would assign to all this death and suffering.

  Late that night, several policemen carrying lanterns came from the Nishi Bureau, accompanied by an official sent to investigate the death. The official was Itō Seizaemon.

  Itō looked down at Kiku’s dead face, then fixed his eyes on the stains from the enormous amount of blood Kiku had coughed up. He stood stiff as a rod. The priests and Okane and Mosaku watched the wordless man from several paces away.

  Since Itō said nothing, one of the policemen asked Okane and Mosaku, “Do you know this woman’s identity?”

  “Yes, her name is Kiku, and she’s from Magome in Urakami Village. She was employed here for a short time, but like the wife and me, she wasn’t a Kirishitan.” Mosaku emphasized the fact that she was not a Kirishitan, not so much for Kiku’s benefit, but to protect himself and his wife.

  “How was she hired here?”

  “I’ll answer that.” Petitjean gave a summary explanation of how he first met Kiku that day in the sixth month and the circumstances under which he had brought her here. However, he adroitly avoided mention of the fact that it had been the same morning that Father Laucaigne had been entangled in the arrest of the Urakami Kirishitans and had fled over the mountains.

  “And why did she quit working here?”

  “I don’t know,” Petitjean said, but Okane deliberately interjected, “I heard she went to Maruyama…. Because it’s got to be more fun for a young woman to work in Maruyama instead of at a place like this.”

  “If she was in Maruyama … did she become a prostitute?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But since they said she was working in Maruyama, I guess she must have done the same things as the other women there, don’t you think?” Because Okane hadn’t been fond of Kiku, there was a note of derision in her voice.

  “Then she was a whore, was she?” The policeman muttered with a sneer. “But why did she come all the way back here to die?”

  Casting a glance in Petitjean’s direction, Okane responded, “Once a girl gets this sick, nobody’ll have anything to do with her. After all, at Maruyama the women disgrace their bodies every night with men, so once your body’s no good, you’re done for there.”

  Okane grinned obsequiously as she spoke, but suddenly Itō whirled in her direction and shouted, “Shut your mouth! What the hell do you … do any of you know?!”

  He shouted with such rage that Okane and her husband and even the policemen looked startled.

  “What in hell do you know about this woman?! She … she was not that kind of woman. Compared to her, you and I … we’re so much filthier than she was!”

  He stopped, shocked by what he had just blurted out. A look of panic washed across his face when he realized what he had just admitted….

  “Let’s get out of here. Work with her family in Magome to make sure her body is buried with all proper respect. I said proper respect! Do you understand me? Proper respect!!”

  Those were Itō’s parting words….

  1. Many Chinese residences were located in the Jūzenji sector of Nagasaki.

  GOING HOME

  THE MEIJI GOVERNMENT ultimately acceded to persistent demands from the foreign diplomatic community and launched an investigation into the treatment of the Urakami Kirishitans who had been banished to various parts of the country. It was fifth month of 1871.

  In the latter part of that month, an inspection team set out for Tsuwano, led by Kusumoto Masataka, an appointed official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with Katō
Naozumi and Uemura Yoshihisa.

  The new leaves of early summer are beautiful in Tsuwano. It feels as though the color and fragrance of those young leaves adhere themselves to every feature of the scenery.

  At the home of Yae Kan’emon, where the inspectors were lodged, Kusumoto and Katō received a visit from the men who were responsible for the handling of the Kirishitans.

  Kusumoto explained the reason for their investigation to Chiba, Kanamori, and other representatives of the Tsuwano domain. “As you know, gentlemen, our government is planning negotiations with several foreign nations at the end of this year to press for revisions in the unequal treaties that were forced on us. Should there be any mistakes made in the treatment of the Kirishitans at this juncture, it could create difficulties for the negotiations.”

  There was neither reproof nor undue probing in Kusumoto’s outline of the purposes for their observation tour. Harsh treatment of the Kirishitans had, from the outset, been the Meiji government’s approach to religion, one it had inherited from the Tokugawa shogunate. The attitude of the investigating team was so relaxed that Kusumoto and his colleagues were up late into the night entertaining Chiba and Kanamori with food and drink.

  The following day, the inspection team was scheduled to examine the prison where the Kirishitans were being held. The only two locations they toured were the Kōrinji Temple, where those who had shown no intention of abandoning their faith were confined, and the nunnery that housed those who had apostatized.

  “Have you inflicted any severe punishments on them?” Kusumoto asked the prescribed question of the officers in charge of the jails. It was obvious to him from a single glance at the children—so emaciated that their eyes alone appeared large, their arms and legs as thin as wire—how they had been treated.

  “The Tsuwano domain has strictly prohibited anything even resembling harsh punishment,” an officer responded just as he had been ordered to do. “But there is a possibility that some excessive coercion may have taken place outside our supervision.”

  “What do you mean by … ‘some excessive coercion’?” Kusumoto and Katō displayed prearranged suspicion on their faces.

  “We of the Tsuwano domain aren’t the only ones who’ve been charged with caring for and persuading these prisoners. They’ve also been interrogated by a man from the Nishi Bureau in Nagasaki,” the officer said, as though he were reciting a memorized speech. With this response, the Tsuwano domain was released from any fear that the central government might reprimand or hold them responsible for abusive treatment of the Kirishitans.

  “Are you saying that in the unlikely scenario that excessive force was used, it was done by someone from the Nishi Bureau in Nagasaki?” Katō asked with a fierce expression, but the officers stared at the ground and said nothing further. Their silence was meant to be interpreted as an affirmative answer to the question.

  “What is the man’s name?”

  “Sir … It’s Lord Itō. Itō Seizaemon.”

  Two weeks later, Itō received notice that he was being dismissed from his position at the Nishi Bureau in Nagasaki.

  “Lord Itō, all of this …” Glancing up intermittently to check Itō’s reaction and looking very sympathetic, Itō’s superior, Noguchi, muttered, “… all of this is on orders from Lord Sawa…. We don’t understand it at all…. Evidently they feel it was wrong for you to have interrogated the Kuros in Tsuwano so roughly. The foreigners heard about it, and so Lord Sawa, as foreign minister, probably had no choice but to take these measures.”

  His face crimson with anger, Itō shouted, “This is unfair! From the very beginning, wasn’t it on orders from the higher-ups that I interrogated them harshly? And it wasn’t … I wasn’t the only one who was hard on them. The officers in Tsuwano did even worse things than I did, throwing them in the icy water and shoving them in that three-foot cell!”

  “Clearly.” Noguchi hurriedly nodded his head. He was in the habit of saying “Clearly” in place of “I understand.”

  “So it’s completely unfair that I’m the only one being punished, don’t you think?!”

  “Clearly. But this is what our superiors have decided, so petty little bureaucrats like us can’t do anything about it. For now, just be patient and we’ll come up with something.” “We’ll come up with something” was another of Noguchi’s stock phrases.

  “And just what will you ‘come up with’?! Damn it all!!” Itō was frustrated to the point of tears.

  Somewhat unpromisingly, Noguchi replied, “What I mean by ‘come up with something’ … is that I plan to ask Lord Hondō Shuntarō if he would intercede with Lord Sawa and ask for some leniency.”

  “Hondō?” Yet again Itō was forced to acknowledge, with frustration and envy, the enormous gap between his life and that of Hondō. But at this point he had no options other than rely on Hondō, even if it meant having to treat him obsequiously. “Lord Hondō, is it? Well, please do what you can.”

  “Clearly. We’ll come up with something.”

  A misty rain fell in Nagasaki throughout the day. As he watched the rain, Itō reflected that there are distinct categories of people in the world: the strong and the weak, the fortunate and the unfortunate, the glamorous and the wretched. While he cursed his own ill fortune, he hung his head as he thought of how Kiku had desecrated her own body by believing in his deceptions.

  I couldn’t help it … Those were the first words Itō had muttered to an ephemeral vision of Kiku. Can you forgive me?

  Still, he knew full well that his own weaknesses would drive him back into the same sort of behavior, perhaps even as early as tomorrow.

  Hondō received the letter that a kindly Noguchi had sent him on behalf of Itō Seizaemon.

  “He’s no end of trouble, that Itō …,” he said, showing the letter to Oyō, who was now his wife.

  Their home in Aoyama was circled by thick groves of trees and bamboo. At her husband’s behest, Oyō was regularly visiting the home of a British family in Kōji-machi, where she took lessons in English conversation and European cooking from the lady of the house. In Hondō’s view, the wife of an up-and-coming high-ranking government official had to be able to speak English and be skilled in Western table manners.

  “What are you going to do about this?” Oyō asked.

  “Nothing. When it comes right down to it, the man is just not the lucky sort. No matter how hard you try to help someone that ill fated, it’s the same as pouring water into a bottomless bucket. But, Oyō, more important than that … you’re still speaking in the Nagasaki dialect,” he cautioned her. He was perpetually admonishing her that the wife of a high-ranking official must not speak in a provincial dialect. “I’m a busy man. It’s too late for me to be worrying about someone like Itō.” With that, he shifted his eyes back to the Western book he had been reading. Realizing the conversation was at an end, Oyō quietly left the room.

  He wadded up Noguchi’s letter and threw it in the wastebasket. Determined to walk the road to success at full tilt, Hondō was not inclined to give any thought to some low-level drunkard he had gotten to know during his time in Nagasaki. It annoyed him that a country bumpkin could be so insensitive as to ask something so out of keeping with his place in society, on the dubious grounds that they had had some minor interactions in the distant past.

  His head was filled with plans for his imminent journey to America. The diplomatic mission seeking treaty revisions, to be led by Prince Iwakura Tomomi, was set to leave Japan in the eleventh month, and one of the distinguished members of the delegation was Hondō, who would be serving as Second Secretary.

  The decision to send a delegation to negotiate for treaty revisions was complicated by a power struggle between Kido Takayoshi and Ōkubo Toshimichi, and the corps of translators also was caught up in the vortex of this rivalry, but a prudent Hondō had adopted a wait-and-see attitude that kept him aloof from either faction. Wisely, he felt instinctively that the path to worldly success lay in not playing out his hand unt
il the last possible moment.

  Once the eleventh month came, there seemed to be farewell parties every night, and each night Oyō waited up late for her buoyant husband to return home so that she could nurse him through his intoxication.

  With the twelfth day of the eleventh month set as the day the delegation would set sail, the couple spent the night of the tenth alone together, consoling each other over their temporary separation. Oyō played the samisen while Shuntarō lifted the saké cup to his mouth with a fleshy hand.

  “Sitting like this together reminds me of those days in Maruyama.”

  “It does, doesn’t it.”

  “Now that I think about it, there was a girl at the Yamazaki Teahouse named Kiku, wasn’t there …?”

  “Yes.”

  Of course, flushed as they were in their own happiness, neither Hondō nor Oyō spent any further time discussing the Kirishitans in Tsuwano, much less Itō. Those people no longer had anything to do with their lives.

  “Oyō … This voyage is going to make my career!” Hondō smiled triumphantly at his wife.

  On the twelfth,1 a clear autumn morning, Hondō Shuntarō left the port of Yokohama aboard the S.S. America as part of the forty-eight-member Iwakura Mission.

  They were not the only passengers on the ship. At 10:00 A.M. that same morning, Mr. DeLong, having concluded his term as minister to Japan, along with his wife, were joined by fifty-nine Japanese exchange students, including five women, bound for Europe and the United States; they all stood on deck waving farewell to their loved ones. As thirty-four gunshots saluted them, the 4,554-ton America quietly set out into the Pacific Ocean.

  Hondō leaned against the deck rail and looked out at the great ocean frothing with whitecaps. This was the first time in his life he had seen the vast ocean surrounding him in every direction.

  Japan is poised to become a great nation. And I will rise in the world along with my country. Taking a deep breath of the ocean breeze, Hondō reassured himself. He considered Western civilization to be the path to progress, and he had not the slightest doubt that the study of Western civilization meant progress for Japan and the Japanese people.