Heart of a Samurai Read online

  AN ACTION-PACKED HISTORICAL

  NOVEL SET ON THE HIGH SEAS!

  In 1841, fourteen-year-old Manjiro and his four friends find themselves stranded on a deserted island after a storm at sea. Beyond the island is the unknown, filled with monsters, demons, and barbarians. Or so they’ve been told. They know they cannot return to their homes in Japan—the country’s borders are closed both to foreigners and to citizens who have strayed. No one may enter, under penalty of imprisonment and even death!

  One day an American ship passes near the island and takes the castaways aboard. Manjiro’s curiosity overcomes his fear of the “barbarians.” He joins in the work of the whaling vessel, eager to learn everything he can about this new culture. Over the next ten years, Manjiro travels the high seas, visiting places he never dreamed existed, including America. It is a time filled with new experiences and adventure, as well as friendship and treachery. Manjiro sustains himself on a dream of returning home and somehow—though he knows it is impossible for a simple fisherman—becoming a samurai.

  Will he ever be able to go back to his native land? And if he does, will he be welcomed or condemned?

  PRAISE FOR HEART OF A SAMURAI

  * “Preus’s excellent first novel … mixes fact with fiction in a tale that is at once adventurous, heartwarming, sprawling, and nerve-racking …”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  * “A classic fish-out-of-water story, and it’s precisely this classic structure that gives the novel the sturdy bones of a timeless tale. Bracketed by gritty seafaring episodes

  —salty and bloody enough to assure us that Preus has done her research …”

  —Booklist, starred review

  * “Illustrated with Manjiro’s own pencil drawings … this highly entertaining page turner is the perfect companion …”

  —Kirkus, starred review

  * “A Japanese teenager living in the mid-19th century bridges two worlds in this stunning debut novel based on true events. Preus places readers in the young man’s shoes, whether he is on a ship or in a Japanese prison. Her deftness in writing is evident … characters gain sympathy from readers as their backgrounds are revealed … beautifully articulated.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “A terrific biographical novel … vividly summons for readers ages 10–16 not only the story of a remarkable man but also the turbulent era in which he lived.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Preus, Margi.

  Heart of a samurai / by Margi Preus.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1841, rescued by an American whaler after a terrible shipwreck leaves him and his four companions castaways on a remote island, fourteen-year-old Manjiro, who dreams of becoming a samurai, learns new laws and customs as he becomes the first Japanese person to set foot in the United States.

  ISBN 978-0-8109-8981-8 (alk. paper)

  1. Nakahama, Manjiro, 1827–1898—Juvenile fiction. [1. Nakahama,

  Manjiro, 1827–1898—Fiction. 2. Japanese—United States—Fiction.

  3. Japan—Relations—United States—Fiction. 4. United States—Relations—

  Japan—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P92434He 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009051634

  Text copyright © 2010 Margi Preus

  Illustrations by Manjiro (signed John Mung) are noted as such in the captions. Otherwise the source is the Hyoson Kiryaku, and the illustrations are by Kawada Shoryo or another transcriber of the original volumes. The jacket art and the illustrations appearing on pages i–xiii, 24–25, 116–117, 188–189, 246–247, and 302–306 are by Jillian Tamaki. Copyright © 2010 Jillian Tamaki.

  Book design by Chad W. Beckerman

  Published in 2010 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Amulet Books and Amulet Paperbacks are registered trademarks of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

  Printed and bound in U.S.A.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  TO PASHA AND MISHA, AND

  ADVENTURERS EVERYWHERE

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE: THE UNKNOWN

  1 • THE STORM

  2 • THE SAMURAI OF BIRD ISLAND

  PART TWO: THE BARBARIANS

  3 • THE JOHN HOWLAND

  4 • THE HUNT

  5 • OIL

  6 • DISAPPOINTMENT

  7 • SHIP LIFE

  8 • THE INVITATION

  9 • SEVEN BREATHS

  10 • DANGER!

  11 • THIEVES AND MURDERERS

  12 • SAILING AWAY

  13 • TREASURE

  14 • THE HOUR OF THE DOG

  PART THREE: THE NEW WORLD

  15 • NEW BEDFORD AND FAIRHAVEN

  16 • SAMURAI FARM BOY

  17 • FITTING IN

  18 • SCHOOL

  19 • VICTORY WITHOUT FIGHTING

  20 • THE CHALLENGE

  21 • FALL DOWN SEVEN TIMES

  22 • THE RACE

  23 • LOVE

  24 • THE MAY BASKET

  25 • THE COOPER’S

  PART FOUR: RETURNING

  26 • THE FRANKLIN

  27 • WHISTLING UP A WIND

  28 • A MOMENT

  29 • THE SEA TURTLE

  30 • SAILING CLOSE TO THE WIND

  31 • THE HARPOONER

  32 • THE WHALE

  33 • TORI

  34 • THE DAGUERREOTYPE

  35 • THE GOLD FIELDS

  PART FIVE: HOME

  36 • BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

  37 • SPIES!

  38 • THE DAIMYO

  39 • NAGASAKI

  40 • THE ROAD HOME

  41 • THE SAMURAI

  EPILOGUE

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SUGGESTED READING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  HEART of a SAMURAI

  PART ONE

  THE UNKNOWN

  I have no parents; I make the heaven and earth my mother and father.

  I have no home; I make awareness my dwelling.

  I have no life and death; I make the tides of breathing my life and death.

  — from the Samurai Creed

  Bird Island as drawn by John Mung

  1

  THE STORM

  January 1841 (12th Year of Temp, Year of the Ox), off the coast of Shikoku, Japan

  anjiro squinted across the expanse of glittering sea at the line of dark clouds forming on the horizon.

  “What lies there,” he wondered aloud, “across the sea?”

  “Nothing you want to know about,” Denzo said, hurrying to hoist the sail. “Barbarians live there. Demons with hairy faces, big noses, and blue eyes!”

  As Jusuke steered the boat toward home, the fishermen fell silent. In three days they had not caught a single fish. Their families would go hungry. Manjiro swallowed hard when he thought of the empty rice bin at home.

  He took one last glance behind them and noticed something strange. Dark streaks ran like ribbons
through the water.

  “Excuse me please,” he said. “What is that in the water?”

  Goemon, a boy not much older than Manjiro, said, “Fish!”

  “Mackerel!” the others cried. Denzo quickly steered the boat into waters black with fish as the others baited their hooks.

  The fishermen hurried to cast their lines into the water, then pulled them in, each time hauling in a fat mackerel. It was Manjiro’s job to pluck the fish off the hooks. His hands bled, but he smiled to see the bottom of the boat swimming with plump, flopping mackerel! Wasn’t it lucky he had looked back one more time? Now they would all be dreaming of dinners of steaming fish, and maybe even a little rice.

  None of them noticed that dark clouds had swallowed the sky. They didn’t notice the waves lapping at the boat. They didn’t notice the wind until the sail ruffled, then snapped.

  “Is the sail supposed to snap like that?” Manjiro asked, forgetting to apologize for his intrusion as he had been taught.

  “Boy,” Jusuke said, “stick to your work.”

  “Does the wind often howl so?” Manjiro squeaked. He knew he should not ask so many questions, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “Quiet, boy,” said Toraemon, one of the older fishermen. “You are a pest. I don’t know why Denzo agreed to bring you along. Can’t you see there are still fish to catch?”

  But no sooner had he said this than the wind began to roar like a dragon. The sail filled with air and yanked the boat on its side until Denzo released the line. Freed, the sail whipped about, flapping like a wounded bird. Toraemon grabbed the oars and pulled, while Jusuke tried to lower the sail. But the wind beat it against the mast until it was torn into shreds. The wind pushed the sea into great mountains of water; it tore the oars from the men’s hands and flung them into the sea; and finally, it snapped the mast, then ripped the rudder away from the boat.

  Without a sail, without oars, without a rudder, the boat tossed about on the heaving sea. Then a cold rain came that turned to ice. The fishermen huddled in the bottom of the boat, the rain freezing in sheets to the boat, their clothes, their hair.

  Days passed. At first they ate the raw flesh of the fish they had caught, but soon the waves that sloshed over the side of the boat had swept away most of their catch.

  Once they came within sight of land. They shouted and hollered, but the wind snatched their voices away. Manjiro’s heart sank when he realized that the boat was not drifting toward the island, but away.

  “Kuroshio,” Denzo said. “The Black Current.” His voice was as dark as the water that surrounded them. Everyone stared at the wide stripe of indigo water which usually flowed north, toward home. This year, for reasons they did not understand, the current flowed southeast. With no sails, no rudder, no oars, they were at Kuroshio’s mercy, steadily dragged toward the vast unknown. How long until they came to the end of the ocean and fell off its edge? Would they encounter the frightening creatures and foreign devils that were said to live and sail in the far reaches of the sea?

  Everybody knew about the foreign devils—the barbarians. Did they really exist, Manjiro wondered, or were they just the inventions of adults to get children to behave? Even he had told his younger sisters, “Go to sleep—or the barbarians will come and get you!”

  But now, in the dark of night, the wind screaming as he bailed bucket after bucket of freezing water out of the boat, images of monsters crowded his imagination. Fanged monsters with long, slashing tails, dagger-sharp horns, and icy blue eyes.

  By the eighth day of drifting, all the food and water were gone. The cold had penetrated their bones and the fishermen huddled together, prepared to die.

  For a long time, no one spoke. They waited for Denzo, the eldest and the leader, to speak first. At last he said, “I was going to buy my own boat when we got home.”

  Everyone nodded. It was a pity. The boat to which they clung was a borrowed boat.

  Next Toraemon spoke. “I was thinking of getting married.”

  Everyone nodded again. It was a shame he would never marry.

  Then Jusuke said through chattering teeth, “I was just looking forward to a hot bath and a fish dinner!”

  “With pickled turnips,” added Goemon.

  Presented with the thought of food, their stomachs ached more fiercely.

  Finally, Manjiro, at age fourteen the youngest and so the last to speak, said, “I had hoped to become a samurai.”

  Everyone laughed. “In his village the fishermen’s children are samurai!” Toraemon said. This made them laugh harder.

  “Don’t tease him,” Denzo said. “Obviously, he is delirious.”

  Am I? Manjiro wondered. He didn’t know why he had said he wanted to be a samurai. It was just what came out of his mouth.

  He lay shivering, drifting in and out of fitful sleep, listening to the wind whistling through the oarlocks and the waves tsktsking disapprovingly against the boat. He had hoped this fishing trip would be a way to redeem himself after his dismal failure in his job husking rice for Imasu-san. He’d thought he’d been so clever to add stones to the grinding machine—it had taken the husks off the rice so much faster. He hadn’t considered that the pebbles and stones might get ground up in the rice, too, making it impossible to eat! Imasu-san had been furious, chasing after Manjiro with a willow stick. Manjiro ran. He ran away rather than face his mother after such a foolish mistake. He would find some other work, he thought. He’d find a job in another village and come home with his pockets full of coins, perhaps! Then he wouldn’t be so worthless! Now he only wished he had at least stopped to say good-bye to his mother. He could hear her voice, calling him. Over and over she called out.

  Finally, he opened his eyes. It was not his mother calling. The sound was made by a large seabird wheeling high overhead.

  A bird! He sat up and shook his friend. “Goemon-chan!” he said. “A bird!”

  Goemon opened one eye. “It’s a bird, that is true.” Goemon closed his eyes again. “Ahodori—fool bird …”

  “But, Goemon-chan!” Manjiro shook him again. “Doesn’t a bird mean there could be land nearby?”

  “Yes,” Goemon sighed. Suddenly his head popped up. “Did you say land?”

  The two boys shook the others, and they all stared over the side of the boat at a small, dark line on the horizon. As the boat drifted toward it, the dark line grew into a tall, looming shape: an island.

  Their hearts beat a little faster. An island could mean freshwater. It might mean food, maybe shelter.

  The shape of the island—a tall, flat-topped mountain—became distinct. And yet not at all distinct. Its outline was blurred, as if the skin of the land quivered!

  As they drifted closer, it appeared as if pieces of the island broke off and floated up into the air. Or black specks floated down and joined the land.

  “Excuse me for asking, but why does it do that?” Manjiro asked.

  The fishermen became uneasy. They had drifted into unknown waters. Perhaps the island was bewitched.

  They sat silently as the boat drew closer to the undulating island. Once again, Manjiro thought, his questions had led them into danger.

  Then Goemon laughed. He had the sharpest eyes, and he could see what the others could not yet see.

  “Birds!” he said. “Thousands of birds!”

  Soon they could all see the birds soaring in the air, as well as covering the slopes of the island. There were so many birds, thousands lifting up or settling down, that the very island seemed alive.

  This was a stroke of luck! They could eat birds, and if they were all fool birds, they would be easy to catch. Perhaps there would be freshwater, too, and other kinds of food.

  But as the sun set behind them, illuminating the island with its final, brightest beams, their hopes faded. A barren rock face loomed ahead of them, without a hint of green anywhere. Worse, boulders rose out of the water like sharp claws ready to tear the boat to pieces. Darkness was falling and the boat rushed steadily o
n—toward the rocks.

  2

  THE SAMURAI OF BIRD ISLAND

  June 27, 1841 (12th Year of Temp, Year of the Ox)

  arth. Sky. Wind. Sea.

  Sometimes it seemed as if that was all there were. All there ever had been. All there ever would be.

  There was this scrap of earth—just a big rock, really. And there was a cave in the rock, which offered shelter. Not warm shelter, but shelter.

  There was sky, plenty of sky, all the sky you could want. Day after day it hung like a swath of blue silk, and at night like a black velvet cloak studded with cold jewels. It gave little warmth. And barely any rain.

  There was the wind. Howling, growling, moaning, roaring.

  And there was the glittering sea.

  “Blue as a barbarian’s eye,” Goemon had said. “I hate the sea.” They had been climbing the rocks toward the albatross nests. That was back when the fool birds were easy to catch, because they would not abandon the eggs in their nests. You could just reach out and grab them.

  “Goemon-chan!” Manjiro had scolded his friend. “How can you say you hate the sea?”