Lord Asunaro’s
New Realm

One day, however, he saw standing before him an elegant, beautiful and unknown maiden, impressively attired. She would have been a little older than him, but there was no hint of condescension as, with a soft smile, she made him a little bow.

Astonishment manifested itself in a small moan that broke from his lips. He stood there rooted to the spot, gazing up at her. Small though his brain might be, his height was considerable – one reason he had been chosen as successor – but now he suddenly found his eyes trained upward.

‘Here, miss, come and play with us! Come on!’ came the encouraging cries from around her, but the maiden lingered on there, apparently lost to the world, and the young Lord Asunaro, quite deprived of words, was impelled forward and reached to seize her sleeve.

She dodged him nimbly, hair ornaments tinkling, and gave a laugh.

‘I’ve been hearing a lot of rumours about your lordship and now I come to see you, you do look delightful fun.’ Her aplomb, so different from the other girls with their little squeals, was bracingly cool.

Ignoring the pestering cries urging him to be quick and take her hand, Lord Asunaro instead followed her beckoning hand and walked to a corner of the main hall. There his unobservant eyes discovered for the first time a low folding screen decorated with paintings in the elegant Tosa School Japanese style, which sheltered a stepped display stand, a little mother-of-pearl writing desk, and on it a gold inlay inkstone case and other writing implements.

The maiden settled herself before the desk with a toss of her skirts that threw out a waft of scent, drew a piece of paper from the lacquered letter box, and swiftly wrote a poem:

Much though this promises delight

alas I must away

to the maternal waiting arms

This she handed to him, and as he took it and raised it to his forehead in dazed thanks, with a rustle of clothing and a little smile, delicious to the eye and ear, she vanished beyond the sliding doors.

Just as he had failed to notice that the afore­mentioned items of furniture had arrived on special order from the capital and were outrageously extrava­gant, in the same way he could unfortunately make no sense of the elegant poem she had given him.

Observing this later, Nursey felt compelled to speak. ‘That was Lady Unokimi, you know. Well well, it’s still an unformed hand, but this is impressively graceful writing. So what have you done for a response poem?’

‘What? … A response poem? … I’ve no idea… Er, she’s going home to her mother, right? I could say I’m envious… Um…’

Here he ground to a halt. Nursey had good reason to cast him a pitying look, for his own mother had died not long after the move to the West Castle.

‘Where does she come from anyway?’ he demanded, suddenly fierce.

‘Well, this must go no further than your ears, but actually she’s someone who his lordship took in owing to a certain family situation. But all that has resolved itself and now she’s to return to her mother’s place. That’s probably why she chose to show herself like that and gave you the parting gift of a poem. It’s just such a shame that you haven’t sent her any poem in reply…’

“Ha… What’s a silly old response poem?’ He gave a loud sniff and pretended to shrug the whole thing off, yet deep within him stirred a feeling of enchantment that was later to undergo a truly great transformation…

People today don’t care for the thought of anyone past early youth relying on the help of a group of ladies to see to the little day-to-day details of their life. But since infancy Lord Asunaro had never been in a position to compare himself with others, so it didn’t strike him as at all odd. It was likewise simply part of the routine for the ritual of food-tasting to be performed before meals twice a day, since the survival of the lord was crucial.

One day he belatedly brought up the subject again. ‘I hear the food-tasting still goes on. Is that true?’

‘Your food is tasted without fail in the next room before it is brought to you.’

‘I see. Well if he’s going to all this trouble, let’s have it done here in front of my eyes.’

‘Dear me no, such an unpleasant sight…’

‘I’ll be the one to decide that. Quick, have him eat it right here.’

The designated official hastily placed the tray in front of his lordship, but the tension was extreme.

‘Come come, relax while you eat. Aha, so that’s where you put the chopsticks, eh? People are really all the same, aren’t they? I see, you do make a lot of noise when you chew. I wonder why.’ He was craning forward to watch, intent on missing nothing.

‘My most humble apologies. I was unaware that I would offend your ears, your lordship…’

‘Yes, I see. You have a big fleshy jaw, that may be why there’s all this noise. Well well, I never knew it was so interesting to watch someone eating. What dish will you go to next? The right one? The left one?’

In increasing confusion, and anxious to be done as soon as possible, the young samurai accidentally tipped over the soup bowl.

‘Oops, over it goes! I sometimes do that too. But there’s a bit of rice stuck to your cheek, you know. Well that was excellent, I’m impressed with the way you eat, the way you chew, and your terrific speed.’

It should be pointed out that throughout the feudal period, the status system was as complex as a spider’s web. Those who personally served the lord were of the highest distinction, but this was not necessarily accompanied by a rise in their allotted stipend. In terms of salary, food-tasters were on a very different rung from those of good birth and lineage, so one had to accept that they bolted their food. For your average samurai the aim was to get it into you quickly, and out the other end with similar speed.

‘Fancy that. I never knew there was such a fine spectacle. So my retainers have all been hiding this from me, ha ha ha!’

Leaning over the elbow rest before him, his neck extended like a tortoise, Lord Asunaro was in great good humour from start to finish.

Hearing of this ‘outrage’, Nursey appeared clutching her memorandum book to her breast. ‘What’s all this, your lordship! That young fellow is in such a state that he’s taken to his bed and others have had to take over his duties. You mustn’t go making fun of people like that!’

‘Eh? You mean he’s upset over that? Oh dear, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do anything bad.’

Nursey’s face tightened. ‘You must realise there can be situations where the effect is the same, no matter what your intentions.’

Suddenly Lord Asunaro struck the elbow rest a violent blow. ‘What? What are you saying? It’s nothing to do with me! I haven’t got a thing to do all day. If that fellow’s upset, well, fine by me. He did as ordered and I praised him, that’s all I can do.’

‘But that’s just it, surely your efforts must be devoted wholeheartedly to improving yourself so that someday soon…’

‘…!’

‘I recall personally hearing you announce that you were going to do your best to master the art of poetry,’ Nursey continued reprovingly.

‘That’s quite true. And thanks to that what happened? A fresh mountain of books has landed on me!’ he spat. ‘Behind them is that other mountain of books my father sent me. What fun, eh?’ And he gave her a bold grin.

When the morning drum sounded, it marked the start of a lecture by the Confucian scholar Tagonoura Kainosuke. The tale of the episode with the food-taster had spread throughout the domain, and beyond the castle walls Lord Asunaro’s next mad antics – as they were called in the castle – were apparently anticipated with much delight.

Reverently, Tagonoura opened the Confucian Analects. His plan seemed to have been to proceed through the Four Classics – The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects and The Sayings of Mencius – but the young lord had sat there half asleep throughout, barely listening. For this reason, the scholar had changed the order, and turned to The Analects as something with which the young lord would have at least a passing familiarity.

‘Confucius determined the progression of life according to a man’s years, but in fact things don’t work out that way. I myself, for instance, am in my sixties…’

‘“In one’s sixties one’s ears follow”, isn’t it?’ As always, the young lord had the elbow rest before him and was leaning on it, his chin resting on folded arms.

‘That’s right, well done. “In one’s forties one has no doubts, in one’s fifties one knows the will of heaven, in one’s sixties one’s ears follow”, Confucius says. In other words, all knowledge flows naturally and one clearly understands what others say…’

The young lord suddenly thrust out a hand.

‘There’s something I want to say to you in private. No one else must get wind of it, so come in a little closer. What, feeling shaky are you? Painful legs? Well then, I’ll move over there.’

‘No, with all due respect your lordship—’

But Lord Asunaro had brought his mouth close to the panicking Tagonoura’s cheek, and suddenly he bit his ear.

‘How… outrageous!’

Lord Asunaro bared his bloodied teeth in a grin as he watched Tagonoura writhe on the floor.

‘I thought if your ears aren’t surprised by things any more that might mean they’re half dead, but actually your ear had quite a crunch to it, considering. Now give me your other ear,’ and he leaned forward to seize it, whereupon the scholar scrambled away on all fours, clutching his bloodied ear.

‘Not so fast. I still have something to say.’

‘Wh…what is that?’

‘That ear of yours. Having sampled it I must say, it’s not something worth following, ha ha ha.’

A number of different lecturers came in turns, but on the next occasion it was a young man who appeared in Tagonoura’s stead.

‘Er… my father is still receiving treatment, so I’ve come in his place. I’m Hironoshin, your lordship.’

At this, the young Lord Asunaro grinned. Sure enough, like father like son – Hironoshin’s ears stuck out just like his father’s. ‘According to the castle doctor Chugensai it was a remarkably deep wound,’ the young lord remarked. ‘He was most impressed. Well it goes to show my teeth are sharp, anyway. They did quite a bit of damage it seems. So how is he now?’

‘Well it’s more the emotional distress that is con­fining him to his bed, your lordship,’ the young man replied diffidently.

‘I’m not exactly crazy you know. He was being ridiculous, carrying on about passing on the sayings of the sages by word of mouth and so on, so I thought “Okay, let’s try that for real” and I put my face up close, and I just had this sudden impulse to bite his ear. Now I’d like to pass something on to you by word of mouth too. Come over here a bit closer.’ Lord Asunaro bared his teeth and his nostrils flared.

‘Heaven forbid! Spare me please!’ Hironoshin was edging backwards.

‘Hmm. No point in comparing the taste of your ear I suppose. So tell me, if you have to do with the words of the sages, you must become quite unworldly, no?’

‘Well not exactly…’

‘Can you ever become like your father do you think? Maybe not today, but someday soon?’

‘No, I’m sure I couldn’t.’

‘When the young lady brought the tea just now you glanced at her. Were you checking how pretty or ugly she is?’

‘Good heavens no…’

‘What a boring mind you have. Okay, even if you didn’t see her face you’d remember what she was wearing, no?’

‘Oh no, I know nothing of such things, you see…’

‘It was dyed to match the colours of autumn. Didn’t you notice?’

‘That is my inadequacy.’

‘Hmm. The blocked ears of a saint? I won’t eat you. There is no need to tremble.’

After that Hironoshin collapsed with stress and these lectures came to an end. The ear-biting started rumours and gossip. But nobody actually criticised the young lord. This was because the father and son scholars, sent by the lord, had become even more arrogant than previously, generating huge animosity.

Young though Lord Asunaro was, this was by any standards willful behaviour. But his father chose to prevaricate rather than interrogate him on the matter, and for this there was a precedent.

The boy’s instructions in swordsmanship had begun back when he was eleven and still living in the main castle. The lord himself was not fond of swordsmanship, which perhaps was behind his choosing to assign the now-retired Satomi Eizan as instructor. Apparently stirred by this, Satomi Eizan grew boastful about a youth spent practicing his skills throughout the land, and was inclined to deal with the lad in a rather offhand manner.

‘Okay then, try this,’ announced Lord Asunaro one day, handing him a pickled white radish while he himself took up the wooden sword. (The protective gear and light bamboo swords of today’s swordsmanship practice were yet to be invented, and only appeared and gained wide acceptance at the end of the feudal period.)

‘This? Very well, very good,’ said Satomi Eizan, gripping the white radish and planting himself in combat stance. ‘One such as yourself is hardly likely to get the better of me, after all.’

But the words had barely left his mouth when the wooden sword came down on him, and as he twisted to dodge it his legs were swept from under him, followed by first one blow then another to his instinctively huddled shoulders.

‘Oh you don’t strike the legs, your lordship!’ people cried as they rushed in to stop him.

‘Just think yourselves lucky I stopped him at the legs and not on his pate,’ declared Lord Asunaro, tossing the sword away. ‘Surely the reason they wear armour and leg guards in battle is precisely because there’s no such thing as rules there.’

For some reason this brazen nonchalance went largely unrebuked by his father.

Nevertheless, years later now, there was no hiding the impression that the young lord’s brain was still not as well developed as his physique.

‘It’s all very well to have yourself spoken of in these terms.’ Clutching her memorandum book as she spoke, Nursey’s troubled voice grew fruity. ‘But you must understand that it does not improve your progress towards attaining the lordship someday soon if you go on cancelling lesson after lesson like this.’

‘Huh. What earthly use are those things anyway? Are you trying to tell me that I’ll get to Daddy’s position in life just by reading and hearing stuff? Don’t be ridiculous.’

Over near the wall lay a scattering of the books he had read, with beyond them the inexorable towering cliffs of those as yet unread, a bulk that never changed. Witnessing now how astonishingly fragile that vast boulder that stood on his steep path to his father’s position had turned out to be, how easily that brittle rock had crumbled in the face of those little explosions of his, something deep inside him melted utterly away, leaving behind it only a gaping chasm.

‘Now then, your lordship, what do you plan to do about your study of poetry? If you don’t care for it, will you give it up?’ Nursey asked, pressing home the issue.

He had made light of the idea with the claim that it was much easier than the usual strings of Chinese characters he had to plough through in his studies, but he reeled at the number of musty tomes of poetics that had arrived as a result of his announcement. His brain was required to negotiate the complexities of poetic association, adaptations of famous poems, poetic puns, poetic epithets, the background to the names of the poets, and more besides, with the dexterity of an intellectual ninja.

He must also be thoroughly inculcated in the art of writing in the mixed Japanese and Chinese script style. There were collections of model handwriting from the past to be studied as well, and short excerpts of handwriting deemed particularly superior. The calligraphic skill of the nobility, monks, poets and military men of the period is quite astonishing, but as with the European quill pen calligraphy of earlier times, necessity made it in fact a natural accomplishment. Samurai of the lower classes would spend what little money they had to provide their children with writing implements. As the only career paths open to them were gained through learning and calligraphic skills, their expensive brushes never stopped even when their equally expensive paper was as good as reduced to fibres with the wear and tear of the black mass of repeated brushstrokes. ‘Home schooling’, in which the brushstrokes were practiced with a stick in smoothed sand or earth, was entirely normal.

The first books to make an appearance in this education were always the twenty-one imperial poetry an­thologies that provided the poetic models. He would have been happy to regain his former lazy existence, but Lord Asunaro soon found himself forced like a plant in a hothouse by two tutors who hovered constantly behind him like a pair of puppeteers, nagging endlessly over posture, thickness or thinness of ink, the various ways to finish the brushstrokes, and the rest.

Now, however, his reaction was different from the days of those torments of Chinese writing practice. Years later though it now was, his bitter regret at having failed to send Lady Unokimi a response poem that day was still fresh. The image of that maiden – so different from the other girls with their little squeals – who had written the beautiful poem with its beautiful brushstrokes and then disappeared along with her tinkling hair ornaments and her scent, only grew more vivid in his memory with the passage of time.

Afterwards, he had pulled the story together from various fragments of information. Politics had apparently lain behind her presence there, essentially as a kind of hostage, and that elegant behaviour of hers had quite likely derived from a keen awareness that, all things being equal, she was destined to become his wife.

This discovery not only moved him deeply in ways he had hitherto never experienced, but he also felt physically flooded with an urgent energy that welled up from within. Wiping away a bitter tear, he had understood that some mere response poem would hardly have begun to answer this situation, but all this he kept strictly to himself.

‘From what I can see, you are throwing yourself into the art of poetry as you’ve never done with anything before,’ declared Nursey, with a bow so low that the memorandum book she clutched to her breast was in danger of folding double. ‘I am deeply gratified, your lordship!’

When Lord Asunaro learned that there was plan afoot for Lady Unokimi to make a strategic marriage – something so taken for granted in this period that no one remarked on it – and that she would now move even further away, he bit his upper lip and tearfully composed the following poem:

To and fro the tide doth shift –

but when it’s at the full

cross to me o’er these castle walls

…although in fact Nursey and the tutors had, with all due respect for his lordship, had a significant hand in its composition. This was sent without further ado to Lady Unokimi, and presently a response arrived.

The deeps remain unknown, and yet

however high the wave

this far tide cannot cross back to you

At a cursory reading, those opening words ‘the deeps remain unknown’ could be taken to mean that, regardless of the intentions of others, within her own hidden depths… Nevertheless, there was no getting around the fact that in a nutshell (or even out of one for that matter) that expression ‘the far tide’, whose words clearly contained a pun on ‘to be “tied” in wedlock’, meant she would not be coming back.

This precipitated the fall, with a resounding crash, of the final great stone of that crumbling edifice within Lord Asunaro’s heart. His ‘penchant’ for the girls, which had already begun to raise a few eyebrows around him, now set in in earnest. It had all the appearances of a lascivious abandonment to desire. But in those days there was no thought of discreetly rearranging things to keep such activities out of view; one simply chose not to see what went on among one’s superiors. The feudal ban on all unrest meant that peace and harmony were prized in all situations.

Such a ‘penchant’ of a designated lord must soon become pertinent to the question of succession. In point of fact, our young lord had by now taken as his wife the daughter of a certain minor lord. In the first few years he had to contend with the oversight of his father, and as heir he was required to devote himself to producing a further heir. His dedication to the task produced four daughters. But, as you will be aware, a daughter cannot become a feudal lord, and so his interest in his wife finally flagged, and his attentions were diverted to, of all things, her ladies-in-waiting. The result of this licentiousness was that his relations with his wife had long since become, to use a modern term, a matter of going through the motions.

Once this had begun, it was as though the lid was taken off. His ‘penchant’ extended to those girls he used to play with, one and all, but now their behaviour was a far cry from that almost nostalgic little squeal they used to give – instead, they now clung to him. He still had no real idea who was who.

And now it was that that same Nursey of old reappeared, almost as if she had been awaiting her moment in the wings, and set about gliding from room to room, memorandum book and writing brush in hand. Lord though he was, he could not indulge his ‘penchant’ quite as he pleased. A diligent record must be kept of every occasion, time and date on which Lord Asunaro took a certain woman to bed, and when Nursey met him next she would cover her face with the memorandum book and form a circle with thumb and forefinger as a silent sign of acknowledgement, while for some reason emitting a toad­like croak.

It is not difficult to understand the crucial importance of this role of hers. For one thing, it was necessary to establish that these acts of his were committed by himself and not somebody else. For another, a son born of a certain coupling does not necessarily turn out to accurately reflect the status of the partner. It may well be that someone of good lineage might give birth to a complete fool, or some lowly person produce a quite outstanding child. Lord Asunaro might be able to ‘pass’ thanks to his father, but if a feudal master was too feebleminded everyone from his retainers to the farmers would be merciless, and at worst it could even lead to the dissolution of the domain itself.

This important department, euphemistically referred to as ‘the women’s rooms’, was of no more practical use than the outmoded watchtower in this time of peace, and like the tower bore no relationship to the actual business of running the domain. Yet insofar as it was what you might call an experimental nursery for the next generation, its relationship to the entire domain was quietly pervasive.

Naturally, the lord’s abandonment morning, noon and night to the indulgences that free time and his matchless sexual appetite prompted with all and sundry was disparaged and condemned both privately and publicly. But the fact is that the women were engaged in a desperate struggle to bear him a child outstanding both physically and mentally, and were it not for this the following situation could not have arisen.