The Bamboo Sword Read online

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Preus, Margi.

  The bamboo sword / Margi Preus.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-4197-0807-7 (hardback)

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Americans—Japan—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Seafaring life—Fiction. 5. Samurai—Fiction. 6. Nakahama, Manjiro, 1827–1898—Fiction. 7. Perry, Matthew Calbraith, 1794–1858—Fiction. 8. Japan—History—Restoration, 1853–1870—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P92434Bam 2015

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015002063

  Text copyright © 2015 Margi Preus

  Illustrations on pages v–ix, 18, 22, 264 copyright © 2015 Yuko Shimizu Book design by Chad W. Beckerman

  Published in 2015 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.

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  What is constant in this world of change?

  Yesterday.

  —Anonymous Japanese poem

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE: WATER

  1 BLACK DRAGONS BELCHING SMOKE

  2 THROWING ROCKS AT THE SUN

  3 ABOARD THE SUSQUEHANNA

  4 THE ARMOR

  5 THE FIGHT

  6 THE WATERFRONT, TOWN OF URAGA

  7 THE COMET

  8 THE STEAMING TEAPOT

  9 EDO

  10 BRUSH VERSUS SWORD

  11 THE SALESMAN

  12 THE LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

  13 INSIDE THE TREATY HOUSE

  14 THE CHASE

  15 LEAVING JAPAN

  PART TWO: EARTH

  16 THE TOKAIDO

  17 AT THE PUBLIC BATH

  18 A FROG JUMPS IN

  19 YOSHI THE BODYGUARD

  20 IN THE SHOGUN’S CASTLE

  21 THE STABLEBOY

  22 KIKU

  23 LASSOING

  24 EVENING

  25 AT THE SOBA SHOP

  26 YOSHI THE SPY

  PART THREE: WIND

  27 JACK ALOFT

  28 KANAGAWA

  29 GIFTS

  30 THE LARK

  31 ANGRY RONIN

  32 OVER THE PRECIPICE

  PART FOUR: FIRE

  33 CARRYING FIRE ON YOUR BACK

  34 THE DISGUISE

  35 FEET

  36 THE GIFTS

  37 BASEBALL

  38 IN THE SHOGUN’S CASTLE

  PART FIVE: AIR

  39 THE ASSIGNMENT

  40 A WASP STINGING A WEEPING FACE

  41 THE COOK’S KNIFE

  42 WINNING WITHOUT THE SWORD

  43 UNDER THE BLOSSOMS

  44 “OH! SUSANNA”

  A NOTE FROM JACK SULLIVAN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART ONE

  WATER

  We make water our model and turn our mind into water. Water adjusts itself to a square or round vessel with ease. It can turn itself into a single droplet or into a vast ocean.

  —Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

  1

  BLACK DRAGONS BELCHING SMOKE

  3rd Day of the 6th Month of the 6th Year of the Era of Long Happiness (July 8, 1853)

  Yoshi was a leaf, spinning in the summer breeze. He was water running over stones. He was the thin, free air.

  Or at least that was what he tried to be. But, really, he was just Yoshi, spinning, lunging, twisting, and slashing. The sword he imagined flashing in his hands was only a length of bamboo. His blade did not exactly flash, but it was at least burnished by the early morning sunlight.

  He kept his heels slightly off the ground so as to move quickly, but he could never quite capture the graceful, gliding motions of the teacher. No matter how much he practiced, he still felt awkward. His slow moves weren’t smooth enough, his fast moves not quick enough. More practice, he told himself.

  Under the flickering green leaves, with the sound of the rushing brook in his ears, Yoshi started again. But something, he wasn’t sure what, made him drop his arm, stand still, and listen.

  Except for the brook and the silvery call of a bird, it was quiet. A familiar quiet, old as these hills and the nearby temple, old as the silent stone Buddha who watched him at his sword practice. But now he noticed that there was a sound, a kind of dull thumping, as if his heart were beating somewhere outside his body. It was so faint that it was almost not a sound.

  He walked to the rocky outcropping that overlooked the village and the bay beyond. A humid haze hung over the valley, made thicker by the smoke from cooking fires. In the village, women were just now rising to begin making their families’ breakfasts. He slid his hand into the fold of his sleeve and felt the cold rice ball wrapped in a radish leaf.

  Should he eat some? Or save it? He was hungry now, so perhaps now would be a good time. But he would be hungry later, too, and it was painful to watch the other boys eat while he had nothing. He pulled his hand away. He could wait.

  Beyond the village, the blue water of the bay winked in the early morning sun. Boats were just leaving the harbor for a day of fishing, their sails bright against the dark hills. Every day the water in the bay looked different: black under glowering clouds, or blue as the daimyo’s silk kimono. Some days it moved as if it were alive, rippling like a horse’s flank.

  Why was it that the water could change every day, but absolutely nothing else ever did? The village below—its thatched roofs and bamboo fences, the skinny stray dogs that trotted along the dirt roads—it had all been like this for hundreds of years and would be forever more, as far as Yoshi could tell. These ancient hills and the temples hidden in them had stood for thousands of years, and probably would for thousands more.

  And yet, this morning, something seemed different. It was as if everything—the village, the hills beyond, the early morning mist and the smoke from cooking fires, the last reverberation of the temple bell, even the water in the bay—everything seemed to be holding its breath.

  The only sound was the steady thumping Yoshi had noticed earlier, and which had grown closer. Yoshi now recognized it as a runner’s soft, thudding footfall. Next the runner himself appeared, a man dressed in a short kimono and a lacquer hat who raced along the path toward the daimyo’s dwelling place. The man glanced at Yoshi as he ran past. “You’d better hang on to your ‘sword,’ little ‘samurai,’” he panted.

  “What?” Yoshi said. “Why?”

  “In the bay!” the man called over his shoulder. “Black dragons belching smoke!”

  What a crazy person! Yoshi thought, but when he turned back to glance at the valley one more time, he saw something he had not noticed before. Far down the bay, toward the ocean, puffs of black smoke rose into the ai
r.

  2

  THROWING ROCKS AT THE SUN

  On the way to Hideki’s dojo, Yoshi carried the slippers his young master would wear later in his indoor classes, and an extra pair of wooden clogs in case of wet weather. He walked slightly behind and to the side of Hideki. On the other side was the umbrella bearer, Jun, who shielded the young samurai’s head from the hot sun.

  Hideki had turned fifteen the previous year, and he now wore the samurai’s daisho: the two swords, one long and one short. As they walked along the dirt road to the school, Hideki clicked his fingers against the hilt of his katana, something he shouldn’t do. Perhaps he was still having trouble getting used to the swords, Yoshi thought.

  Yoshi knew he should not look left or right but instead keep his eyes straight ahead. Still, he couldn’t help craning his neck to see if anything unusual was happening.

  “What is it, Yoshitaro?” Hideki asked kindly, using Yoshi’s full name. “Are you looking for something?”

  “Please excuse my foolishness,” Yoshi said, lowering his eyes. Had anyone else seen the black smoke? he wondered. Should he say something to Hideki? He chewed on his lip, trying to decide what to do with the strange information he had. He imagined a dozen different ways of explaining what he’d seen and heard, but every one of them sounded outlandish. Unbelievable. Ridiculous. He would sound like a crazy person. Nobody would believe him, not even Hideki.

  In the entryway to the dojo, Hideki stepped out of his wooden sandals, which Yoshi bowed to, picked up, and bowed to again before placing them into their special shoe compartment. Meanwhile, Jun collapsed the umbrella and tucked it into the umbrella compartment.

  Yoshi helped Hideki into the quilted, bamboo-lined vest, the face shield, and the other protective gear that he wore when at practice. Then Hideki stood with his left arm stiff by his side while Yoshi tied the arm to his body. Swords were worn on the left side, and so a bushi had to draw and fight with the right hand. This was the law from ancient times.

  Unfortunately, Hideki was not naturally right-handed, and he was having difficulty learning to fight the correct way. Sometimes Yoshi wished he could take Hideki’s place and spare him the embarrassment he suffered for his clumsiness. But the only kindness he could offer was to avoid Hideki’s eyes while he tied the knots binding his master’s arm to his side.

  When Hideki and the other samurai went into the courtyard to practice, Yoshi and Jun retreated into a grove of shade trees with the other servants. Most of them pulled paper-wrapped snacks from their sleeves. Yoshi turned away and went to find a place where he could keep an eye on Hideki and maybe observe some of the action in the class.

  Jun trotted after him. “Oh, brother,” he said. “Look who’s here.”

  Yoshi turned to see the man everyone called Kitsune—the Fox—who was the head of the family’s bodyguards. Jun and Yoshi tried to avoid Kitsune as much as possible, for it was said that he used his sword more often than his tongue.

  This morning, though, he was using his tongue to complain about the way the kendo master ran the class.

  “These boys are soft!” he groused to his friend as they stood with crossed arms, watching. “They only ever practice with bamboo sticks! They should be testing their swords on corpses and practicing archery on dogs, as we did in our training years.”

  “Well,” Kitsune’s companion said, laughing, “at least as our grandfathers did.”

  Yoshi’s stomach turned. He sometimes imagined that he might be a samurai. But even if he really were, he would not shoot dogs!

  “In this next exercise, we will say that the two opponents are in the following positions,” the sword master was saying. Yoshi turned his attention to him.

  Behind Yoshi, Jun yawned and said, “Time for a nap!” He stretched out under a ginkgo tree. “How about you?”

  “Maybe in a bit,” Yoshi said.

  “Don’t get any big ideas, Yoshitaro-san,” Jun teased. “You’ll never be a bushi, you know, no matter how much you eavesdrop on their lessons.”

  “I know, but . . .” Yoshi bit his tongue and turned his attention back to the instructor, who was showing how to knock an opponent’s sword away. The teacher made it look easy, demonstrating with one of the students.

  “You’re like the boy who throws rocks at the sun,” Jun joked.

  “Uh-huh,” Yoshi said absently. The instructor was demonstrating another move, using a real blade. Yoshi loved to watch the teacher’s graceful moves, the curving lines, the smooth, perfect steel—the way man and sword became one fluid, lethal dancer.

  Later, alone in the forest, Yoshi would practice what he had observed. He would try to move in the teacher’s slow, sure, meditative way, then dart, fast as a snake, to wound his imaginary opponent.

  “You’re funny,” Jun said. “You’re the only one watching. Even his students don’t pay attention to him.”

  It was true. The students who were waiting their turns lolled in the heat, their heads drooping. Some of them who waited outside were dozing under the trees, the shade hiding their closed eyes.

  “They’re all bored, “ Jun said. “What do they need to learn this for, anyway? There hasn’t been a war for hundreds of years.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Yoshi replied. “But what if there was one?”

  “A war with whom?” Jun said. “The shogun has complete power. He keeps the families of the lords in Edo, as if they were hostages, so they can’t rebel. The only time samurai ever use their swords is to test their sharpness on corpses. Or on poor peasants like us.”

  “What if the barbarians from the West should come?” Yoshi said.

  Jun scoffed. “Barbarians! If they come, our warriors will run them through—one, two, three!” He slapped his hands together as if cleaning them off. “The things you think! Why do you waste your time with such worry?” He closed his eyes.

  Everything Jun said was true. Yoshi and Jun would never carry swords, never put on battle armor, never ride a horse into war, even if there was one. Still, he couldn’t help but watch the sword master’s graceful movements, mentally imitating them, while wondering why did he waste his time learning things he could never use? It was like Jun said, as senseless as throwing rocks at the sun.

  As he pondered this, a horse and rider thundered into the courtyard. The rider glanced around and, apparently deciding that Kitsune was the highest-ranked samurai there, dismounted, ran to him, and, bowing, gasped his breathless message: “Foreign ships in the harbor—black ships that move without sails! Alien ships of fire! The country is about to be invaded by a hundred thousand white devils! All samurai are to prepare for battle!”

  A Japanese artist’s interpretation of a Black Ship. (artist unknown)

  3

  ABOARD THE SUSQUEHANNA

  Friday, July 8, 1853

  As the ships neared the bay, signals were made from the Commodore, and instantly the decks were cleared for action, the guns placed in position and shotted, the ammunition arranged, the small arms made ready, sentinels and men at their posts, and, in short, all the preparations made, usual before meeting an enemy.

  —M. C. Perry, Narrative of the Expedition to the China Seas and Japan, 1852–1854

  Jack had only just glimpsed the peaks of Japan when the order rang out: “General quarters!” The drums began their steady roll, the thrum coming from all four ships: the two steam frigates, the Susquehanna and the Mississippi, and the two sloops of war, the Saratoga and the Plymouth. It seemed that even Jack’s heart drummed out the rhythm, a relentless roll, punctuated by sharp, pounding beats.

  The deck came alive with men lowering sails, stowing gear, and running to their stations. Boxes of shot were uncovered, the great guns run out, cannonballs heaped beside each cannon.

  Jack tried to steal glances at the lush, green hills and rocky cliffs as he made his way to his assigned place: gun number four. A loose chicken scuttled past him, squawking among the chaos.

  “Flapjacket!” a midshipman b
arked at him. “Secure that wayward hen!”

  Jack veered after the renegade chicken, dived, grabbed her by the feet, and crammed her into the coop, then raced to the gun deck, where the orders were already flying:

  “Pile that shot up neat.”

  “Uncover that box of grape.”

  “Pry open that case of canister shot.”

  All these orders came at once and from three different people. It was always this way. As a lowly cabin boy, Jack took orders from everyone, and there was always something he was supposed to be doing that he was not, and always somewhere he was supposed to be where he was not. He helped the cook in the galley, served the officers, carried messages, scrambled into the rigging to clear a halyard, stood watch, and most regularly was assigned to tend the chickens and the livestock and clean their coops and pens. The only one lowlier was Willis: smallest, skinniest, and shyest.

  If the need arose, it was up to the two of them, Jack and Willis, to be powder monkeys, ferrying gunpowder from the powder magazine to the gun deck—but only in case of actual battle. Still, at every drill, they were required to pretend to carry their lethal cargo from the lower deck to the guns. This time, though, there was the possibility of real battle, and Jack felt a tremor of excitement run through him.

  When every gun was readied, everything in place, and every man at his station, a deathly silence fell over the ship. All stood at full attention as the four ships made their steady way up the bay at nine knots, puffing out their clouds of black smoke.

  Jack stood on an overturned bucket, peering over the bulwark at the terraced valleys, towns, and villages undulating past. An offshore breeze carried with it the smell of green, growing things. It was so delicious, Jack could almost taste it.

  How often had he dreamed of this exotic, unknown region of the world, hoping that by some enchantment he might be wafted here. And now here he was, Jack Sullivan, among the first to see this land, closed to outside eyes for the past 250 years. And for all those years, this country, so far as anyone knew, had lived in peace. What other nation could say the same? Certainly not the United States, which had been in some kind of war ever since the revolution that had started it seventy-five years earlier.