Shinju Read online

  “Yes, master.” His head bobbed, and his eyes twinkled. Despite the wrinkles that creased his cheeks and forehead, he looked as innocent as a child.

  “What’s your name?” Sano asked.

  “Yes, master.”

  Sano repeated the question. Getting the same response, he tried another. “Where do you live?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “Did you start the fire?” Sano asked, beginning to understand.

  “Yes, master, yes master!” Then, seeing Sano’s frown, the man lost his smile. He got to his feet, but fell back as the doshin’s assistants surrounded him again. “No hurt, master!” he pleaded.

  “No one will harm you.” Furious, Sano turned to the doshin. “This man is a simpleton. He doesn’t understand you, or what he’s saying. You cannot accept his confession.”

  The doshin’s face flushed, and he squared his shoulders. The jitte shook in his clenched fist. “I asked him if he started the fire. He said yes. How was I to know he was an idiot?”

  A voice from the swelling crowd of spectators cried, “If you’d taken the time to talk to him, you would have found out!” Someone else shouted, “He’s just a harmless old beggar!” Mutters of agreement followed.

  “Shut up!” The doshin turned on the crowd, and the mutters faded. Then he faced Sano. “Arson is a serious crime,” he said with exaggerated patience and not a little self-righteousness. “Someone must pay.”

  For a moment, Sano was too appalled to speak. This law officer—and many others, if the rumors he’d heard were correct—cared more about finding a scapegoat than about uncovering the truth. He wanted to chastise the man for shirking his duty. Then he saw the doshin’s free hand stray toward the short sword. He knew that only his rank kept the man from challenging him on the spot. He’d made the doshin lose face before the assistants and the townspeople. And, on his first day in the field, he had made an enemy.

  To make peace, he contented himself with saying, “Then we must find the real arsonist. You and your men and I will question the witnesses.”

  Sano watched the doshin and his men move off to mingle with the crowd. A curious elation came over him. He’d corrected an injustice and probably saved a man’s life. For the first time, he realized that being a yoriki offered many opportunities for seeking the truth, and just as many rewards for finding it. More, perhaps, than his work as a scholar, poring over old documents. But he wondered uneasily how many more enemies he would make.

  It was early afternoon by the time Sano returned to the administrative district, located in Hibiya, southeast of Edo Castle. There the city’s high officials had their office-mansions, where they both lived and worked. Messengers bearing rolled documents passed Sano as he rode along the narrow lanes between earthen walls that shielded the tile-roofed, half-timbered houses. Dignitaries dressed in bright, flowing silk garments walked in pairs or groups; fragments of conversation dealing with affairs of state and the latest political gossip reached Sano’s ears. Servants scurried in and out of the gates, carrying trays stacked high with lacquer lunchboxes. The thought of those delicacies made Sano regret the greasy noodles he’d eaten at a food stall on his way back. But the arson investigation had taken longer than he’d anticipated, and the quick though unpleasant meal he’d had would let him return to his other duties without further delay. Turning the corner, he headed toward police headquarters.

  “Yoriki Sano-san!” A breathless messenger ran up to him, ducking in a hasty bow. “Please, sir, Magistrate Ogyu would like to see you at once. In the Court of Justice, sir.” He raised questioning eyes for Sano’s response.

  “Very well. You’re dismissed.”

  A summons from the magistrate could not go ignored. Sano changed course.

  Magistrate Ogyu’s mansion was one of the largest in the district. At the roofed portals of its gate, Sano identified himself to a pair of guards dressed in leather armor and headgear. He left his horse with them, then entered the mansion’s grounds and threaded his way through a small crowd of townspeople gathered in the courtyard. Some were waiting to bring their disputes before the magistrate; others, accompanied by doshin and with their hands bound by ropes, were obviously prisoners awaiting trial.

  Sano paused at the main entrance of the long, low building. Barred wooden lattices covered the windows. The roof’s projecting eaves cast deep shadows over the veranda. Seeing the mansion for the first time, he had imagined its dark, brooding appearance symbolic of the often harsh sentences pronounced inside. The surrounding garden, with its unlit stone lanterns and skeletal winter trees, reminded him of a graveyard. Shaking off his fancy, he climbed the wooden steps. At a nod from the two guards stationed there, he opened the massive carved door.

  “Blacksmith Goro.” Magistrate Ogyu’s reedy voice echoed across the long hall as Sano paused in the entryway. “I have considered all the evidence brought before me regarding the crime with which you are charged.”

  Sano went to wait at the back of the hall with the samurai courtroom attendants. At the far end, Magistrate Ogyu knelt upon the dais. A thin, stoop-shouldered old man, he seemed lost in his voluminous red and black silk robes. Lamps on either side of his black lacquer desk lit him like a figure on stage. The rest of the room was dim; sunlight filtering through the latticed rice-paper windows provided the only other illumination. Directly before the dais was the shirasu, an area of floor covered with white sand, symbol of truth. There the accused man, bound at wrists and ankles, knelt on a mat. Two doshin knelt on either side of the shirasu. A small audience—witnesses, the accused’s family, and the headman of his neighborhood—formed a row toward the back of the hall.

  “That evidence indicates beyond all doubt that you are guilty of the murder of your father-in-law,” Ogyu continued.

  “No!” The scream burst from the accused man. He writhed on the mat, straining at his bonds.

  Several of the spectators cried out. A woman collapsed weeping onto the floor.

  Ogyu raised his voice above the din, saying, “I sentence you to death. So that they may share in your disgrace, your family is to be banished from the province.” He nodded to the doshin, who leaped up and bore the screaming, struggling prisoner out the back door. The attendants hurried forward and escorted the spectators from the room, one dragging the weeping woman by her armpits. Then Ogyu called, “Sano Ichirō. Come forward.”

  Sano walked to the front of the room and knelt behind the shirasu, a little shaken. Ogyu had just sentenced a man to death and his family to exile, but he was as calm as could be. Sano reminded himself that Ogyu had served as one of Edo’s two magistrates for thirty years. He’d handled so many trials that he had grown inured to sights that would disturb others. He bowed deeply to Ogyu and said, “How may I serve you, Honorable Magistrate?”

  Ogyu’s pale, spidery hands toyed with his magisterial seal, an oblong chunk of alabaster that bore the characters of his name and rank. His pinched face with its drooping eyelids gleamed sallow and sickly in the flickering lamplight, and his age-spotted bald pate looked like a diseased melon.

  “Arson is a serious crime,” Ogyu murmured, studying the seal with elaborate concern. He paused, then added, “Though not an uncommon one.”

  “Yes, Honorable Magistrate,” Sano answered, wondering why Ogyu had summoned him. Surely not to exchange trivialities. But Ogyu, like many other members of the refined upper classes, never came directly to the point. Kneeling in the Court of Justice, Sano felt as though he—or rather his powers of comprehension—were on trial.

  “Such important but distasteful matters are best left to the devices of the lower classes. And one’s actions have a most unfortunate way of reflecting unfavorably on others.” Ogyu turned his head to gaze toward the north windows, in the direction of the castle.

  Then Sano understood. Spies and informers abounded in Edo; they were part of an intelligence network that helped the shogun maintain the Tokugawas’ unchallenged control over the nation. Someone had undoubtedly begun r
eporting to Ogyu on Sano’s activities the day he assumed his position as yoriki. That someone must have been in the crowd at the site of the fire. And Ogyu had just told him that for a man of his rank to do doshin’s work shamed the entire government, all the way up to the shogun. Although he didn’t want to contradict his superior, Sano felt compelled to defend himself.

  “Honorable Magistrate, the doshin and his men would have arrested an innocent man if I hadn’t stopped them,” he said. “By questioning the witnesses, we got a description of the real arsonist, and—”

  Ogyu lifted a finger, silencing Sano. The gesture came as close to an open rebuke as Sano had ever seen him make. But instead of speaking about the investigation, Ogyu changed the subject. “I had the privilege of taking tea with Katsuragawa Shundai yesterday.”

  The syllables of the name fell over Sano like an iron blanket. All further protests died on his lips. Katsuragawa Shundai was his patron, the man who had gotten him this position.

  During the civil wars of the last century, Sano’s great-grandfather, a vassal in the service of Lord Kii, had saved the life of a fellow soldier, head of the Katsuragawa family. The Katsuragawa fortunes had risen while the Sanos’ declined, but that act had bound the two families inextricably. Sano remembered the day when his father had called in that old debt.…

  His father had taken him to see Katsuragawa Shundai at the city treasury. Kneeling in Katsuragawa’s sumptuous office, they had accepted bowls of tea.

  “I do not have much longer to live, Katsuragawa-san,” his father said. “That is why I must request your assistance in the matter of my son. I have no fortune to leave him, and he is a mere tutor with no prospects and no special talents. But surely, with your influence …?”

  Katsuragawa did not reply at once to the unspoken question. He lit his pipe, then cast a measuring glance at Sano. Finally he said, “I will see what I can do.”

  Sano kept his eyes on his bowl. He hoped that Katsuragawa would do nothing, because he knew that his duty to his father required that he accept whatever was offered. However, he could live with the idea of benefiting from Katsuragawa’s patronage. In peacetime, samurai no longer made their fortunes by the sword. Their hope for success lay in getting a position in the government bureaucracy, through some combination of ability and connections. But he hated the thought of leaving his beloved profession for another that would suit him as little as he suited it.

  Ogyu’s voice recalled Sano to the present. “I trust that we understand each other?”

  “Yes, Honorable Magistrate,” Sano said heavily. Ogyu had reminded him of his obligation to his father and to Katsuragawa. To fulfill that obligation, he’d agreed to serve as a senior police commander when Ogyu, at Katsuragawa’s request, had offered him the post. It left no room for argument, independent action, or unconventional behavior. Duty, loyalty, and filial piety were the cardinal principles of Bushido—the Way of the Warrior—the strict code that governed a samurai’s conduct. His honor, highest and most important of all virtues, depended on his adherence to the code. And the military government Sano served valued conformity and obedience more than it did the pursuit of truth and justice, which were, by comparison, fluid and negotiable. Sano must defer to his superior’s desires at the expense of his own. He also felt deeply disgraced by Ogyu’s implied criticism. Never again would he venture out of the administrative district to investigate firsthand the cases that crossed his desk. From now on, those cases would remain words on paper. He bowed again, expecting Ogyu to dismiss him.

  But Ogyu had not finished. “A small matter has come to my attention,” he said, “one that must be handled with the utmost discretion. You will do exactly as I say.”

  His uncharacteristic directness piqued Sano’s curiosity.

  “A fisherman pulled two bodies, a man and a woman, from the river this morning,” Ogyu continued. His small mouth pursed in disgust. “A shinjū.”

  Sano’s curiosity grew. Double love suicides were almost as common as, and surely even more distasteful than, the fires that Ogyu had told him to leave to the doshin. Often lovers who couldn’t marry due to family opposition chose to die together in the hope that they might spend eternity in the Buddhist paradise. Why did Ogyu want to involve him in a petty shinjū?

  Ogyu gave him the answer to his unspoken question. “This was found on the woman’s body,” he said, taking a folded letter from his desk and offering it to Sano.

  Rising, Sano crossed the shirasu and accepted the letter. The delicate rice paper crackled in his hands as he opened it and read the characters inked in a fine feminine hand.

  Farewell to this world and to the night farewell

  We who walk the path that leads to death—

  To what should it be compared?

  To the frost by the road that leads to the graveyard

  Vanishing with each step we take:

  How sad is this dream of a dream!

  Noriyoshi (artist)

  Niu Yukiko

  Sano recognized the passage from a popular Kabuki play about a pair of doomed lovers. This was their final song before their death. Now he knew why Ogyu wanted him to handle the matter with discretion. The man, Noriyoshi, was a peasant, as the lack of a surname and the appendage of his profession made clear. A nobody. But Yukiko was daughter to Niu Masamune, lord of Satsuma and Osumi Provinces and one of the wealthiest, most powerful daimyo.

  “I can see that you appreciate the delicacy of this situation,” Ogyu said. “Since the cause of death is obvious, you will dispense with the matter as quickly and quietly as possible. You will have Niu Yukiko’s body returned to her family, and inform your staff that anyone who publicizes her name or the circumstances of her death will meet with the most severe punishment.

  “The man Noriyoshi, however …” Ogyu picked up a brush and dipped it into his inkwell. “Noriyoshi shall suffer the full penalty dictated by the laws of the land. That will be all, Yoriki Sano.”

  Conflicting emotions warred within Sano. Ogyu wanted him to close the case without investigation. To keep Yukiko’s identity confidential, and to disgrace Noriyoshi’s family by exposing his corpse in public—customary treatment for love suicides. But Ogyu’s overemphasis on discretion aroused his suspicion. Every instinct told him to probe for the truth about the shinjū. But he had made a pledge to behave correctly and play by the rules.

  “Yes, Honorable Magistrate,” he said, bowing. “I obey.”

  Police headquarters occupied a site in the southernmost corner of the administrative district, far from the office-mansions and as remote from the castle as possible. According to the tenets of the Shinto religion, any contact with death conferred a ritual impurity, a spiritual pollution. Even the police’s indirect administration of executions made other officials shun them. The appearance of their headquarters reflected this isolation: completely surrounded by a high wall, with not even its rooftops visible from the street.

  Sano gained admittance from the guards stationed at the gate and turned his horse over to a stableboy. Crossing a yard lined with doshin barracks, he entered the rambling wooden main building. He walked through the reception room, a large, open space broken by square pillars. There chaos reigned. Four clerks seated at desks on a raised platform in the room’s center dispatched messengers and dealt with the many visitors lined up before them. Doshin waited to sign on or off duty, or to give their reports. Servants streamed through the side entrances, bearing tea trays to and from the inner rooms where the yoriki had their private offices. Muted daylight came in through the windows, falling in shafts through the tobacco smoke from many pipes. The sound level remained at a constant civilized hum with only an occasional raised voice. But Sano found the inner reception room quiet, empty except for two men. Both wore formal dress—full, flowing silk trousers and wide-shouldered surcoats belted with wide sashes—of the most fashionable cut and pattern. The scent of wintergreen oil emanated from their meticulously arranged hair. They were the epitome of the proud, style-c
onscious yoriki.

  “Yamaga-san. Hayashi-san.” Sano bowed. “Good day.”

  Yamaga, the taller and elder, inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment. Face radiating hostility, he did not reply to Sano’s greeting. Hayashi, a man of Sano’s age, twisted his thin lips in a sarcastic smile.

  “Good day, newcomer,” he said. “I trust that your work goes well with you. Or at least as well as could be expected, for one not born to the responsibility.” His mocking air made the solicitous words an insult.

  Saddened, Sano watched them go. He’d seen at once that he would not easily make friends with them or his forty-seven other colleagues. Unlike himself, they were true yoriki who had inherited their positions from their fathers. That an unqualified outsider could slip so easily into their ranks was an affront to their family and professional pride. Now their chill disapproval followed him as he walked down the long corridor and entered his own suite of offices, nodding a greeting to the clerks under his supervision.

  When Sano slid open the door to his private office, he found another source of unhappiness awaiting him. Hamada Tsunehiko, his sixteen-year-old personal secretary, lolled on the mats near the charcoal brazier that heated the room, reading an illustrated storybook. The reports that Sano had given him to file lay disregarded upon his desk. His plump body strained the seams of a black cotton kimono patterned in white swirls and bordered with red checks. His shaved crown made him look less like a grown samurai than an enormous infant. When he saw Sano, his round, pudgy face took on an almost laughable expression of horror.

  “Yoriki Sano-san!” he cried. “You’re back!” Hastily he scrambled to his knees and bowed, first tucking the book out of sight beneath his buttocks. “I await your orders!”

  Sano gazed at Tsunehiko with exasperated affection. The secretary’s father, a powerful bureaucrat who wanted his idle, not-very-bright son to have an occupation, had prevailed upon Ogyu to find work for Tsunehiko. Ogyu had assigned him to Sano’s office. So far he had proven himself lazy and incapable of getting even the simplest tasks right on the first try. He also breathed loud and hard through his chronically plugged nostrils, a further irritation. Still, Sano found it impossible to dislike Tsunehiko. The boy was cheerful, good-natured—and just as out of place as Sano felt.