Hakubo, Twilight

By Don Harold

As the Way of the Sword, Bushido, is taught, I know that my life is in the sword I carry. Much like myself, the sword has a name, all it’s own. The blade, my odachi, or sword is called The Tsuki Tategami, or Lion of the Moon. The blade is my life. Were it to break, I would carry the tsuba, the cross guard with me all my life.

I am samurai. See, in the samurai chain of command, there is a pyramid of command, at the top of which sits the Shogun, ruler. Under him is the Daimyo, generals, and then Samurai, soldiers. Beneath all samurai are the peasants, then the filth.

To hold my blade in your eyes is to see into my soul.

My name, however is Oda Jubei. My family has been samurai for many generations and I am one of two twins of Oda Jun, my father. He was a great warrior, and he is the reason I had to spend so little time in the war that occurred in my youth. His influence had spread and he was a daimyo, general in rank.

You may recognize the name Oda as a descendant of my family, Oda Nobunaga, who would one day be a great daimyo, and later he would be a great shogun, ruler of Japan. But that is in the past for you, and generations would pass after my time when he rose. It’s just way of showing to you that my family was truly honorable. Honor, as you will see, means a great deal to me.

My story began and ended here, in the city of Shinjuku, where my body still lay for some years there in the snow, my flayed open by another sword, the Tiger of the Sun. Ohisama Mouko, was the name. My thoughts were strained, but coherent. Strange to lie here, and that, after so many years of being better than any other man to cross blades with me, I should be felled by someone I had known all my life to be so much less than myself.

My duties, as samurai were simple. I was what the western civilizations would someday call a marshal. I was the son of a daimyo, so I had little extra leverage in the ways of free-time and making my way across life. When I wished, other samurai of lesser classed families would be able to aid me as I saw they should.

Following my duties, as I was required, I made my way along life, and until this day, I had never known sorrow as I did in those three short days. It haunted me to know of it, but I feel there was no other choice then. It all began with a dead woman, there in the teahouse to the east, about three hours away.

The teahouse where she died, was far out, at the edge of my fathers territory, but far enough away form the disputed between-territory, it was our duty to investigate it. I rode out, on one of my father’s horses, making out at noon. On the journey, I kept to myself, pulling the rice hat down over my eyes to shield from the sun, not that it hid my identity from others. On every haori, kimono or any other shirt, flag and house of every samurai, was my fathers crest, one of the sun and the moon, a simple circle colored with flames and stars. The sun did, however get shut out by the hat, which was a great boon to the trip. My simple black haori, was no exception.

The horse beneath me shifted and I ran my fingers through his mane, idly as I watched the small hills roll by, curious, as the ri passed by. a Japanese measurement, roughly to four kilometers. After around three hours, I could see the hills fading away, giving in to the mountains, where the teahouse was built. From the other side of the mountain pass, one was supposed to be able to see the entire building. So I’m told, anyhow. But I had never left my father’s realm, not for any reason other than the war, and that had been in the west, not the east.

The horse crested the mountain and I looked down on the square buildings of the teahouse, there expanded by an elegant bridge from one side of the path to another. It was magnificent, the two symmetrical buildings on either side, both roofed in red tiles and the green trip around the building accented with the white rice screens of windows and doors that decorated the buildings, with railed awnings that surrounded it every edge.

A young stable boy made his way out to intercept me, and I slid down from my mount, and handed the reigns to him as I removed my sword from the saddle and held it in my left hand, a loose grip around the sheathe, about a thumb’s length form the tsuba. I smiled and bowed slightly, while he leaned down, bowing down lower than I had done. This I noticed, thought it was hardly uncommon. It wasn’t his drive over mine, it was simply that I was samurai, and he was not. With a nod, I made my way up the stairs to the teahouse doors, and slid them open gently with my fingertips and stepped inside, I looked around, holding Tsuki Tategami at my side, blade up, as the customary way of holding it would dictate. It was peculiar for teahouses to have such an entry way, as most of them have a hanging cloth at about shoulder height. Oh well, maybe Shinjuku was getting old. Maybe.

As I stepped inside, all eyes moved to the blade, and then to my haori, over the sweeping crest, and all eyes dropped, all people standing fell to their hands and knees, bowing low. My eyes passed over them carefully and examined each one, waiting for one to rise, which one finally did, after a few moments. A young girl rose, and stepped forward, before me, peering up at me as I removed the rice hat, pushing it backwards over the top knot of my hair, behind me.

“Are you Lord Oda?” she asked, her hair pushed back in an elegant bun, her eyes were deep and bright, seeking something in my eyes, comfort, or maybe an answer to the murder that was supposed to have occurred here. She carried a small gray tray, holding it close to her as if she could depend on it.

“Hai.” Yes, I replied, softly. “A murder occurred here, didn’t it?” I asked, shifting my weight on the tabi sandals that were on my feet.

“Yes, lord Oda,” he confirmed. “If you’ll come this way, we moved the body into a back room where no one is ever close enough to…” For lack of will, she made a gesture of fanning the smell away from her face. I nodded quietly, and stopped behind her to wait for her to push the door open. As the lacquered door slid open and away, the smell wafted to me, and I brought my sleeve up to distort it and to keep from growing ill. I had to focus.

Standing over the departed woman, I knelt, and ran my fingers along the edges of the flowery orange kimono, decorated with a bright red obi, sash. Her face had been pretty. As I knelt, I could see the glassy surface of her eyes had been unchanged, probably out of respect for the Oda orders, making their preference of covering the eyes, as most did, somehow less than apparent.

I reached up myself, and closed them. The grimace of pain on her face, how it had contorted in death was left as it had been, but I could tell there was nothing to be done. Upon the bright orange and white cloth, there was a brilliant flower of red, spread out from the chest out and away. I spread the kimono and I could hear the intake of the gasp made from the teahouse girl behind me. I noted over my shoulder that she had lifted the small tray up to cover her gaping mouth.

I myself almost gasped when I looked back. The wound was small, not a slash, but a strike. Odd to see such a thing, as none were allowed to own weapons. All men who were not samurai or honorable by birth were forbidden by law, which is how the rise of martial arts was advocated in Japan in those times.

But this wound was made by a sword, and was made by a sword that had been thrust all the way to the hilt, where the tsuba had collided with the flesh, when the sword was forced through. There, it had bruised and among the bruise was a darker mark of where the sword-name was darkened, a deeper mark of where the purple-red became purple-blue.

Oddly, and yet fortunately, the sword-name was reserved only for swords that were made for a specific samurai, a request of a very good sword-smith. So this meant the killer was samurai. Or more likely, I reflected, ronin, master-less samurai.

Another notch in the samurai chain of command is taken even below the peasants, at the foot of the pyramid. The criminals, thieves… the ronin, samurai who had no master are here, wallowing in their dishonor and shame.

I asked the teahouse girl to bring to me a paper and brush, along with ink and the like, then set all three next to me, and wrote down the sword name that had killed the woman I had named in my mind, Orchid-Flower. I wrote down, in simple hiragana on the firm paper, what I saw.

This, of course, was backwards, and means nothing in the way you see it above.

Shortly after I left the room, the paper securely folded up in my sleeve, and made back to the entrance and moved into an empty tearoom, one with red paper on the walls. I sat there alone, and dismissed all the tea-house girls. Even the one who’d helped me, carrying that little tray all the while, was ordered away from entry while I meditating on what I’d read.

Now, the sword that had inflicted this wound had obviously been a wakizashi, a short dagger version of a katana, usually worn on the opposite of the sword-hand side, there with the katana. The tsuba wound had been small, thinner than a katana blade would have been, but as a rule, all blades, the three typical ones of the samurai, were the tanto or wakizashi and katana were made together, at the same time, by the same smith. This must have held true for such a weapon, who’s name was this;

Ohisama Mouko… The Tiger of the Sun.

At this point, I should have called for another samurai, but whether in my arrogance or in my excitement, I could do no such thing. I was the daimyo’s son, and I had to show that I could still deal with such things. Since the war, I had done little to aid the world around me, and merely managed the smaller things in the house, biding time untill I felt I could step outside without recalling the death that had been around me, so full in the air.

I ran my fingers lightly over the lacquered sheathe of Tsuki Tategami as I sat there, thinking quietly on what I’d already learned. If this sword was new, with innovative sword techniques of the southern regions, Tsuki Tategami may not hold up.

See, when a samurai blade is forged, it is very important for it to be smelted and have the strengths of all metals spread out through the sword, to not have a weak point on it. Tsuki Tategami was done well, with more than the usual amount of steel, but… Maybe Ohisama Mouko would prove itself stronger than my odachi blade. Most samurai did not wield such a blade. The odachi style was big, and its handle extended to compensate. I had to carry it in my hand because with it held in my obi, I would not be able to draw such a sword so quickly. From the wounds and the tsuba-marks, there was no way to tell what type of sword the katana form of Ohisama Mouko might take.

For all I knew, the ronin may carry a zanbato, a man-sized sword, and merely carried a stolen wakizashi or tanto with him. My fingers left the smooth touch of the sheathe and moved to the handle and set the weapon closer to me, out of comfort, hoping that it would guide me as it had in the war before coming home.

I decided shortly, as my ideas grew impotent and awry, that I would stay the night here, in one of the flowery decorative rooms, and the next night I would go to one side of the mountain, where I’d had Tsuki Tategami forged, though I had not gone myself to pick it up. The sword-smith there was supposed to be quite impressive, and maybe, if the journey took too long, I would stay there in the shrine among monks for a night. I simply had to find the ronin.

Writing in hiragana once more, I dictated a letter to my father about the murder that had occurred, and told him what I had discovered, though I left out the sword name, for a reason I couldn’t say made much sense. Superstition or worry. My sword was the moon; this ronin’s blade was the sun. My father, the daimyo, had a sword named Hakubo, The twilight. It was an odd little coincidence, but one that was connected somehow.

Whatever the connection, spending my all the night in deep meditation would only tire me, so I decided to situate myself in a corner, sitting there, leaned against the wall, my odachi resting carefully against my shoulder. There on the tatami mat, I blew out the lamp that the small girl with her steel tray had lit for me, then closed my eyes, and waited for the sun to shine through the rice screens. I slept quietly, unperturbed by the foreign place that I was no sleeping in, whether I could feel comfort here or not.

I dreamt of a place that I remembered well, but felt so very different to me now. Back there, in the golden sunshine during the autumn of falling orange leaves, I could feel an ominous apprehension at the back of my neck. There I had been raised for three years of my life, where I learned the most important rules of Bushido. Where I became samurai. There with my brother, we learned day in and day out, the rules and theories of swordplay, strategy, reading, writing, and philosophy.

Our master, Shun had been a great samurai underneath my father, and had taught us well, matching our skills against each other.

We were only moments apart in age, and our sizes were about the same. Our physical appearance had always been more or less matched, thin with a muscular physique and more or less handsome, as far as warriors go. Until that day, we could masquerade as one another to joke with our father on and off. On the final day of our training, we did edged weapon training in the fields for the last time.

There, in the colorful fall of the leaves and in the falling sun, we raced to each other, our borrowed blades singing and screaming for blood. I don’t know what pushed our practice over the edge; We were forbidden to use edged weapons in practice. I didn’t have Tsuki Tategami just yet, not for another year or two. But so young, we loathed following such foolish rules and disciplines. In many ways, I never did learn from my mistakes.

Upon meeting our blades, we both tried to repel one another and forced the blades closer, and shoving hard, I waited and then stepped back, as I had seen our father do in battle. Then I brougth my blade close to his head, to make him submit.

Only, in doing so, I hadn’t only grazed his head. The sword-blade, the super-sharpened edge of the katana dug into his head from the temple down and tore ligaments in his eye on the left side. He wailed for only a few moments, and screamed, but allowed me to dress the wound and help him back to where we’d been staying.

Reprimanded, I had felt horrible. I asked to commit seppuku, the traditional way of accepting shame and defeat by killing oneself, but my father and brother had both intervened.

“My eye is not worth your life,” my brother had told me, and smiled softly with the bandages still around his head. I wept then, and soon, I was training alone, there in the fields. “If only one of us can remain samurai, you must do so in my stead.”

I sat up with a start, clutched at Tsuki Tategami, and brought the handle to my sword hand, but I stopped short of drawing. After drawn, a sword must be used. I dreamt of that day often, even so many years past then. Shuns’ home, the temple life among the monks in the mountain had been an attraction to me from time to time. Shun too, had done wrong accidentally killing a known spy for my father. Shamed, and also denied seppuku, he’d lived among Buddha ever since.

I hadn’t paid it any mind in the last few years, but that night, so long ago, in Shun’s home, I had spoken for the last time to my brother. Word came months later that he had tried to take up archery once more, an art I had never mastered. In an accident, he’d been slain and lost, over a cliff into the woods. His body hadn’t been recovered, but the samurai who’d been with him were sure of his death.

Upon hearing this, my father had immediately returned to war, and fought even harder. I had stayed behind, minding our home and territory, wondering idly whether I should take my own life in any case. I had traveled to the wood where my brother had died, but the monks there had told me they knew nothing of any hunting parties.

I hadn’t crossed paths with my brother since then. When he had come home before his death, I had ridden out to war to avoid seeing the scar I’d inflicted on his face. It was a shame that I had done such a foolish thing, even in an accident.

And since that autumn, I’d given up the flourished skills that I’d imitated. I would make my sword an efficient one not meant to lock blades with any other. And I hadn’t. My sword hand got faster, stronger with every day, and I could take down other swordsmen with swift striking blows, swinging through their defense with the extended reach of the odachi blade, to kill and never be touched again.

Looking around me to the rice-screened room, I noted the dim shapes of the shadows around me fading and made for the door. And slid on my tabi, and pulled on another fresh black haori. With the rising sun, I mounted and left the teahouse, making for the shrine where Shun was still living.

I tethered my mount there at the foot of the long staircase that led up the mountain and then made my way up the wide stone pathway. Upon reaching the top, I ran a thumb gently over the scabbard of Tsuki Tategami. Maybe, with some luck, I wouldn’t have to speak of what I’d encountered in the night before to Shun, who would try to console me.

At the shrine, a figure sat, kneeling before the golden statue of Buddha from underneath the awning that protected them from the sun and the rain. I stood outside, not wishing to carry Tsuki Tategami in with me, scorning the kami, spirits of this place.

From there, I waited for him to stand, the figure shaved bald and wearing long sweeping white robes and polished prayer beads. He turned one side to me and looked me over as one might imagine a fish to do.

“Have you seen Shun?” I used his personal name, not the family name. In his shame, there was no need to call his family name. Everyone knew of his fate here in the shrine.

“I haven’t. He’s dead, Oda-sama.” The man spoke, moving to one side of the shrine and then the other, running his fingertips over the polished wood.

“Dead? Shun died?” I asked, softly to no one in particular. I looked away, out over the walls outside the small building, at where his name would be posted, as a resident, past of present.

“He let an oni go free into the world.” The bald man said, shaking his head softly and making for the door. Oni were demons, who came from tales parents told their children to behave. Many religious men believed oni were true demons, evil spirits who came down upon men, peasants and samurai alike.

“An oni?” I asked, looking back. My hand tightened. “Did the oni kill him?” From the doorway, he shook his head and I looked at him curiously, from the right, his profile suddenly clicked into place for me. Like shogi tiles falling down in a line, I knew him.

“No, I’m afraid that the evil spirit went free, so I had to kill him. Retribution. Debt to the man who was attacked by the oni.”

“You killed Shun!” I whispered loud, and suddenly, Tsuki Tategami’s handle was in my hand. I drew the blade and held it in my right hand, fixing the sheathe in my obi so I could wield it freely. I pointed it at him. I realized then that I had not seen his left side.

“I killed the man who let me be maimed.” he spoke evenly, but even underneath that, I could feel the movements he’d made while I scanned the walls outside. Blades were in his hands, and he stepped away from the door, away from me by a couple steps.

In his hands was not the long blade of an odachi as I held in my own hands, but a pair of kodachi, shorter swords, comparable to the wakizashi, the side arm, but longer, thicker, able to stand up to katana blows.

I knew without checking that these blades crossed before him were Ohisama Mouko.

I swung wide to his left, watching his face in wonder as he turned wholly to defend himself by crossing the blade directly in the path of the blades and thrust out in a scissoring motion. I stepped back and adjusted my stance. Brother or not, the man before me had a great disability on his left side, so he overcompensated by turning to the side he wasn’t dominant in.

With swordsmanship, your dominant hand is the hand you want ready and behind your mass to thrust. Otherwise, the swordplay becomes lacking and starts to pale before a swordsman who will do no such thing and make little mistakes as his dominant hand should have a great deal more dexterity with which to outmaneuver any opponent.

With this in mind, I chose my blow. Samurai battles, in grace between two men on one straight path of Bushido, are finished with a single resolve. The way shows us the winner before the final blow is struck sometimes.

I, Oda Jubei moved my sword hand in and thrust straight at him, in quick, successive thrusts, and drew back, spinning free of his range. It was done.

In attacking directly to his center, I avoided using his disability, one that had probably increased his awareness and given him the drive to move faster on the left, but even faster on the right, where he could see. So I attacked the center where two swords could not cross and police my actions in any form. He would have had to move to the left, but refused to be handicapped.

The man who wielded Ohisama Mouko, my brother fell before me and I sheathed Tsuki Tategami.

“Sanna-akei,” I addressed him as brother and removed Tsuki Tategami from my sash, holding it again comfortably in my left hand where it often was. The man’s eyes swiveled to me and I stopped for a moment, my thoughts jarred by what I saw.

A man knelt before me, five open blossoms of blood gaped before me, and he was smiling a little, still holding Ohisama Mouko. But not in any sword holding style I had ever seen. Certainly not one Oda Samna would have used.

In holding the swords equally, there was balance, but no sword-hand was defined. This was most common in left-handed swordsmen. Something Oda Samna, blind or not was not. I held still for a long moment and watched as the man spat blood out, still reeling from his defeat.

“You killed him.” he whispered, gurgling, as he lashed out one last time with the kodachi, opening a wound on my arm.

“I did nothing he himself doesn’t forgive,” I said, wrenching Ohisama Mouko, the right-handed blade from his limp wrist and brought it down on the man’s neck. He fell, and I wrenched both blades free, sheathing them silently. “May the saints forgive you.”

I thought momentarily that it was over, but I realized why it was not only shortly after returning to the tea-house. These kodachi were alike, but there was a third blade, the wakizashi that was missing. I held deathly still there, holding the two in my arms.

“Oda-Sama.”

He truly had not forgiven me, as there, before me was the man who kept a hand carefully close to the peripheral of his right eye so as to protect himself. This man, alive again in more ways than one, whose swords were in my hands. I had not killed my brother, not the man just a few hours ago. That man had been a ronin follower of a stronger ronin.

My brother, now, wished his swords returned to him. Of course, no man before me would have such a thing so simply. That’s not the way of the samurai or ronin.

To Be Continued.