Sunrise came with the sounds of voices Isla didn’t understand and smells she didn’t know. Sunlight glowed in the square paper walls. The futon was hard beneath her, and she slowly opened her eyes. A toddler, a little girl with short hair and chubby little arms, stood above her, staring. Isla blinked back, not sure what to do.
‘Yura,’ Kana whispered from the sliding door, which was open a crack. The little girl tottered to her, and Isla could see the strong resemblance that told her Kana was Yura’s mother.
‘Good morning.’ Isla bowed her head with as much dignity as she could muster from the futon. ‘Thank you for your hospitality.’
‘Your accent is strange.’ Kana’s gaze flicked down, like she was judging every inch of Isla. Kana had long hair, dark locks resting on one shoulder and reaching past the obi belt at her waist. Isla tried not to wither beneath her gaze. ‘You sound like you’re from the east,’ Kana said after a while.
Isla’s brow furrowed. She spoke standard Japanese – as best she could, at least. She supposed the east must refer to Tokyo.
Isla eyed the tray of food the woman had brought in. A bowl full of chopped sweet potato. Soup with cubes of tofu and seaweed. A slice of fish. A salty, savoury scent that suddenly made Isla’s stomach ache with hunger.
The toddler grabbed a fistful of her mother’s kimono, her fingers in her mouth. She glanced backwards as she was ushered outside. When Kana slid closed the door, Isla sighed, looking around.
Washi walls, made from squares of Japanese paper, shielded the room against the sunlight. It was much warmer in the daytime. A new kimono was folded nearby, a brown square on top. Her stomach lurched as she scrambled over to snatch it up. Her wallet. Beside it was her phone, dead of course.
Her pulse quickening, Isla opened her wallet. Nothing was missing, not her student ID nor the several 1,000-yen notes. She would have to offer some to the woman and man who had helped her. Her ankle still stung, and she remembered the pitfall trap with a strange mingle of embarrassment and the desire to laugh. What would Mum say when she told her about that?
Isla pulled on the simple robe, leaving the futon folded as neatly as she could make it. She had been so tired last night she had let Kana help her, but she was sure she had figured it out by herself.
She paused, glancing around the room. As she’d thought, there were no electric sockets in the walls, no smoke alarms or light switches. She hoped Kana would at least know someone who had a phone. These people would need to communicate with the outside world sometimes.
Now the shock was wearing off, it was rather exciting being here, right in the middle of a traditional village.
Isla supposed there would be a hot spring resort nearby, or maybe this society was walled off from modern Japan. Whatever the case, she hadn’t heard of this place.
She slid open the door with a dull rasp to find just outside a small garden, grass and stones and the scent of winter flora. To her surprise she saw a river that rushed by, startlingly like the Kotsuki River she had walked by just a day ago on her way to the museum. Perhaps she was a little farther along it. There was no safety railing here.
A cold, smoky breeze lifted her hair as she looked beyond.
Sloping roofs greeted her, and then trees and hills as far as she could see. There wasn’t a skyscraper in sight, and no sign of any of the buildings of the vibrant and bustling Kagoshima City she had been exploring. It was disorientating.
Isla felt like Dorothy, swept off to Oz.
Confused and suspecting a concussion, gingerly she touched her head, expecting to find a painful lump. There was nothing there.
Her stomach rumbled loudly. She had to eat.
Her breakfast was hearty but mild, and she ate it where the doorway connected her room and the porch.
A chilly wind washed over her as she slipped her feet into a pair of straw sandals waiting outside. She once more tested her weight on her bad ankle. It was less swollen than the night before thanks to the bandage, but still tender.
She shuffled clumsily along, the kimono restricting the movement of her legs. She felt a bit foolish, but Kana hadn’t given her clothes back and Isla was worried that refusing to wear the robe might come across as ungrateful. In any case, she was pleased for the extra warmth of the kimono.
The sandals whisked against the stone beneath her soles. She had never been patient, and the urge to get home felt strong. What was the point in sitting around? Isla comforted herself with the thought that she’d be back in her hotel room in a few hours.
She didn’t see the young man who’d helped her until she was almost upon him, and she jumped for the second time that morning.
In the daylight, she could make out more of his face. Narrow eyes, a warm light brown. High cheekbones and a straight, serious mouth. His hair, with a widow’s peak hairline, was tied in a neat topknot at the top of his head. With his black robe and swords at his left hip, it was like he’d walked straight out of a historical drama.
‘Good morning.’ He bowed to her.
She returned the gesture and the words. Those, at least, she understood.
His eyes flicked down to her chest and she crossed her arms, annoyed. Her lips had parted to remind him where his eyes had strayed to, but he said, ‘Your robe is on wrong.’
‘What?’
‘Left over right.’ He gestured putting on a robe. ‘Right over left is . . . bad luck. It’s for someone who has died.’
Isla swallowed a groan. She’d known that, she knew, she had just forgotten.
He turned away, and Isla went back to her room to fix her mistake. Left over right. At least she’d been corrected before anyone else saw.
His expression was respectful when she went back to him for a second time. He wore his haori jacket, probably the one he had lent her, the wide sleeves now blowing behind him like wings. His swords looked like real samurai swords, the same as the ones she had seen in museums and textbooks. She tried not to stare.
‘Follow.’
‘Is there a telephone box nearby?’ she asked, limping a bit more now as she tried to keep up. He didn’t answer. Were her words incorrect?
The man slowed and looked at her seriously. He was taller than her, a few strands of his black hair loose now in the breeze. He looked a bit like the café barista from the day before, Isla thought, if he’d been dressed as a samurai.
She was supposed to meet the barista at one o’clock. Isla felt a pang at letting him down. He’d think her rude. She didn’t even know his name – she should have asked it.
‘I’m taking you to our leader.’ Her host’s words interrupted these thoughts as they made their way along the riverside. Isla saw people walking around, some of the men carrying sheaves of hay or workmen’s tools, and there was an industrious sense to them that told of self-sufficiency. ‘He’s back from a fishing trip and wants to see you,’ her companion added.
Good, thought Isla. This had to be positive.
Then she noticed people were staring at her.
Isla swallowed, her throat tight. They seemed to think her strange, and she didn’t like this.
She didn’t like anything that was happening. When she’d headed for the museum, the riverside had had a fence, a neat stone path winding through the grass, and signposts with historic notes. But all around her now by the water was raw and wild, and any buildings she saw were low-rise with sloped roofs and wooden construction. Isla didn’t see anyone not wearing kimonos or without their hair in buns and topknots. Two children, no older than eight, wrestled wearing only their undergarments, thin strips of white cloth tied around their waists and between their legs. An old man gutted a fish, yellowed teeth bared as he yanked out bones. They passed a home where the strong scent of green tea reached them, a faint murmuring coming from within. It all seemed basic and rural, a bit like a place that time had forgotten. Isla was all for immersive experiences, but this one was proving far too heady.
The winter sky was brilliant blue. Across the river was a familiar shape, and Isla’s heart lifted a little.
‘Mount Sakurajima,’ said the young man, as if reading her thoughts. ‘We are lucky. No ash rains from the volcano today.’
This was the volcano she had seen from Kagoshima. They couldn’t be far from the city, then. Still, something felt wrong to Isla, some unknown detail niggling at her she couldn’t quite fathom, even though she could see what felt like so much. Without the huge buildings and lights and roads, what lay before her now was the river winding between small houses and shrines, the scent of cedarwood, incense and miso on the wind.
They turned from the river and passed the ruins of a castle, a blackened skeleton that was a sad remainder of what it used to be. There was something familiar about this place, but Isla couldn’t pinpoint what. They came to a busier road with horses and trundling carriages, and as they left the ruin Isla noticed that one or two people glanced at the moat and sloping stone walls with sad shakes of their heads, and wondered if the castle had burned down recently. She would have asked her companion but he seemed to be distracted.
‘What is your name?’ he asked.
‘Eye-ra.’ She adjusted the pronunciation to the Japanese version, as close to the original as possible while avoiding the tricky ‘L’ sound.
‘Eye-ra,’ he said as if he were tasting it with his tongue. He stopped and turned towards her, adding, ‘Isla-san. I am Maeda Keiichirō.’ He had introduced himself with the family name first, as was custom. He bowed low.
She didn’t know what else to do, so she used the phrase she knew for ‘Nice to meet you’, and bowed back.
They moved on and, although Isla saw people whispering about her, somehow this didn’t make her as uncomfortable now.
Isla didn’t see any young people wearing jeans or band t-shirts, any businessmen in suits, clutching briefcases. This wasn’t the Japan she had found, all trendy young people and ambitious office workers. There was no rattle of a passing train, nor a convenience store in sight. She’d heard about authentic-style amusement parks and wondered if Kagoshima was home to one and this was where she was. But there was something not quite right. An amusement park was run by staff, staff who went home at night. Yet she had been given a bed, and nobody had dropped the act to ask why a tourist had wandered inside. And the looks she got were not of polite curiosity, but of suspicion. The talk of gaijin, foreigner, twitched the back of her neck.
Keiichirō’s pace slowed as they approached the square-jawed man who had accompanied them yesterday. He stood before them with his arms crossed, glaring as they passed. Keiichirō ignored him, and Isla tried to do the same, which wasn’t easy with her bad ankle. It wasn’t as bad as before, the hot spring water having soothed it, but each step still twinged.
‘Is he angry about something?’ Isla asked when they were out of earshot. She thought she had seen hatred in the man’s face, a stiffness to the way he stood with his arms crossed, and such uncloaked loathing made her uneasy.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Will he do anything?’ Isla glanced behind her and saw the man’s hand resting on one of his swords.
Keiichirō said, ‘He won’t.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes, Isla-san. I never lie.’
It wasn’t reassuring. The tone of Keiichirō’s voice was much more tentative than his words suggested.
* * *
At a grand building, wide and one-storeyed, they slipped off their sandals and stepped on to the engawa porch. Isla gazed around in fascination at the garden, every bonsai tree and rock perfectly placed to be harmonious with the low stone wall and wooden surroundings.
Keiichirō had been here only once before, and anticipation rose as he escorted Isla to where Beppu-san was waiting, dressed smartly in a kimono and wide hakama trousers, the Shimazu clan crest stitched on each side of the chest.
Beppu Shinsuke was around thirty years old and had thick hair and a goatee. He looked at them briefly and then gave a sharp jerk of his head towards the door. He led them inside.
‘Saigō-sama,’ said Keiichirō as the sliding door opened with a quiet rasp. Behind him, Isla’s breath caught, and he realised she was nervous. ‘I’m here about the woman we found. A foreigner. But she speaks a little of our language.’
He glanced at Isla, who lingered in the doorway, looking out of place even with the kimono Kana had lent her. Her hair, short for a woman’s, was a tangle. And the colour of fire in a shaft of sunlight. Keiichirō could see it was no wonder Hirayama Aiko had mistaken her for an otherworldly creature. If it weren’t for the few foreign teachers Keiichirō had met in the school, the girl would mightily unnerve him.
‘Enter, Maeda-kun.’ Saigō-sama’s use of kun, the affectionate honorific, was pleasant and Keiichirō relaxed a little. It was a tatami mat room that carried the scent of wood and rush grass.
Saigō-sama always made Keiichirō want to stop and gaze in awe. He was a huge man with enormous shoulders and thick eyebrows, a heavy-set face and large, powerful hands. It was claimed Saigō-sama was unbeaten in sumo training since he was a child, and he had fought alongside the emperor, bringing Japan into a new age after toppling the Tokugawa Shogunate. He had retired shortly afterwards and established the shi-gakkō academies to train samurai. Saigō-sama was a true leader, and the samurai would rather have had no one else as head of the schools. It was thanks to Saigō-sama that men like Keiichirō had a place to go and things to do. It wasn’t easy for a young samurai to try to make a living by making umbrellas or working in the fields.
But two hundred years of peace in Japan meant the traditional ways of the samurai had long since ended.
It was something Keiichirō’s father, Maeda Ujio, had always lamented, longing for the days when the samurai would clad themselves in lamellar armour and die gloriously in battle, or commit seppuku, ritual suicide, in the face of defeat. Ujio always held a nostalgic ache for what he called the better days. He had fought against the Tokugawa Shogunate under Saigō-sama, something that gave him a sense of purpose after the death of Keiichirō’s mother.
This unrest, however, left a bitter taste in many veterans’ mouths. Some samurai clans had been forced to submit to the emperor and now there were rumours of disdain in Satsuma for the new shinseifu government and the way they had abandoned centuries-long traditions. Since the Americans had arrived in Japan and forced open the country’s borders, the emperor had been so eager to become powerful in the world that he had dismantled the samurai’s power and discarded centuries of tradition.
And now the once-mighty warrior class struggled to survive.
Recently the emperor had banned the public wearing of swords, and those in government were cutting their hair short and wearing Western clothing.
Keiichirō’s fingers brushed the swords at his hip. The people of Satsuma were proud of their heritage and traditions. They would not easily bow to the whims of the new shinseifu government. The way of the samurai was still strong here.
Silence swirled in the room. Saigō-sama was looking at Isla, and slowly his expression became warm.
‘Good morning, oneesan,’ said Saigō-sama, gracing her with a small bow. He sat with his legs crossed. His sword, a pale tassel hanging from the handle, and his gun lay against the wall nearby, along with his fishing gear. ‘I trust you’re finding your stay comfortable?’
Keiichirō wondered if all foreigners were the same. He could read every emotion that flickered across Isla’s face, and it was as though she was laying her heart out in an open book. But now confusion flashed across her expression as she glanced to Keiichirō.
She doesn’t understand.
‘I’m afraid her Japanese is limited, Saigō-sama.’ Keiichirō paused, then decided not to mention Isla falling into the trap, saying instead, ‘A village girl saw her. We found her in the woods on the outskirts of the town, near the old shrine. Her name is Isla.’
Saigō-sama’s voice was slow and kind as he asked more questions.
Isla stuttered, her accent a strange mix of Tokyo dialect and the clumsy tripping up of a foreigner’s tongue, and some strange vocabulary he didn’t recognise.
Keiichirō had heard non-native Japanese before, of course, for in the shi-gakkō they had foreign teachers for Chinese and Dutch studies. His neck warmed. He should have asked Isla these questions before bringing her here. He hadn’t even known her name until a few minutes earlier.
He watched and listened, hoping the senior men would find out why Isla had come to their community.