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The Tokaido Road
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“ROBSON DELIGHTS US
She revels in the language and reveals the Japanese as a poetic, witty people.”
The Washington Post Book World
“Engrossing . . . Re-creates the colorful people, stunning landscapes and arcane customs of feudal Japan . . . Robson keeps the story moving deftly through the separate worlds of courtesans, warriors, priests, peasants, poets and actors, with an eye to the complex rules that govern them all.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“THE TLKAIDL ROAD has an authority of detail and atmosphere that can only come from careful, extensive research and a lively historical imagination. Cat is an intriguing character [and] many readers will enjoy following her travels.”
jeanne larsen
Author of Silk Road and Bronze Mirror
“Lucia St. Clair Robson, who has captured a loyal following with her American historical novels, now turns her considerable talents to an actual incident in Japan in this absorbing novel.... Robson has added her special creativity to her superbly detailed research and written an unforgettable novel.”
Rocky Mountain News
“CAPTIVATING AND TRANSPORTING ...
What is to us an unfamiliar world comes absolutely alive.”
Cosmopolitan Magazine
“Excellent ... A fast-paced, rousing adventure tale skillfully interwoven with one of Japan’s great stories: the early eighteenth-century vendetta of the forty-seven rMnin or masterless samurai. Robson is well informed about Japan and Japanese history and... she maintains a sound historical framework for her tale.”
paul varley
Professor of Japanese History
Columbia University
“A grand tale for anyone with a fondness for rich adventures... A real gift to those who know and are continually intrigued by Japan, its people and their history ... THE TLKAIDL ROAD is replete with detail and colorful images that offer wonderful insights into the ways of ancient Japan. It is a skillfully woven tale that is captivating and thoroughly entertaining.”
Annapolitan Magazine
‘THE TLKAIDL ROAD is an engrossing novel. Its main characters are complex and believable; its minor characters offer wonderful insights into feudal Japan. Most astonishing is Lucia St. Clair Robson’s grasp of detailed aspects of life in the early Tokugawa Period. A Canterbury Tales backdrop to an Eye of the Needle suspense story. I read it in one sitting!”
robert oxnam
President, The Asia Society
Author of Cinnabar, A Chinese Mystery
“A SUMPTUOUS,
EXTRAVAGANT, AND EXOTIC
SENSUAL FEAST . . .
A sweeping tale of vengeance, mystery, adventure, intrigue, and love set in early 18th century Japan ... Filled with a myriad of accurate and colorful historical details, THE TLKAIDL ROAD is a lush, picturesque read. Readers will feel as if they have been steeped in Japanese tradition, language, and poetry. ... Masterful.”
Rave Reviews
“A richly detailed saga ... The experience of the road, with its quixotic encounters, exquisite verbal images and vibrant sights, and sounds and smells, grows almost as significant as the journey’s goal—making this a charming, unusually memorable adventure. Earthy, humorous, lively—and a veritable encyclopedia of the ways of old Japan.”
The Kirkus Reviews
“Replete with hand-to-hand battles, rooftop chases, and perilous escapes, their adventures are also rich in details of customs, attire, ritual, and terrain, punctuated with poetry. This depiction of an era commands interest. Recommended.”
Library Journal
Also by Lucia St. Clair Robson
Published by Ballantine Books:
RIDE THE WIND
WALK IN MY SOUL
LIGHT A DISTANT FIRE
THE
TLKAIDL ROAD
A NOVEL OF FEUDAL JAPAN
Lucia St. Clair Robson
BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK
Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold or destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Copyright © 1991 by Lucia St. Clair Robson Maps copyright © 1991 by David Lindroth
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-93213
ISBN 0-345-35639-X
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Hardcover Edition: March 1991
First Mass Market Edition: May 1992
For Brian, my companion on the Road.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Yoji Kondo for his advice in the writing of this story. His knowledge of the complexities of Japanese history and culture and of the vicissitudes of fiction were invaluable. If errors remain in the text, the author takes sole responsibility for them.
Friends in Japan have also encouraged, aided, and sheltered me while I researched the tale of the forty-seven rMnin. In 1970 the Nakatsu family of Iwakuni allowed me to live in the tea house in their enchanting garden where I could not help but fall under the spell of Japan. In twenty years, that spell has only grown stronger. Also in 1970, Shizuko Osaki, doll-making sensei extraordinaire, tried her best to steer this outlander through the intricacies of Japanese society. She’s been a true friend and mentor ever since and I owe her a special debt of gratitude.
In Otake, my old friend Masaaki Hirayama and his family took me into their home. Masaaki helped me find information and drove me to places hard to reach even on Japan’s marvelous rail system.
For all these friends’ continuing generosity of spirit I can only give inadequate thanks. Likewise, the Japanese who have befriended me on my travels are too numerous to name, but their kindness to a stranger will always be remembered.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PRONUNCIATION OF JAPANESE WORDS
NOTE
TÕKAIDÕ ROAD MAP
TÕKAIDÕ MAP 2
THE TLKAIDL ROAD
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57<
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CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PRONUNCIATION OF JAPANESE WORDS
Japanese vowels are pronounced as follows:
“a” as in father
“e” as in weight
“i” as in ink
“o” as in open
“u” as in due
Syllables are given equal stress, with each vowel being pronounced separately. For example, the word for “no,” “iie,” is pronounced ee-ee-ay. O’s and u’s with a macron over them (M,k) are given a slight emphasis. TMdo would be pronounced to-o-do.
NOTE
In feudal Japan days were divided into twelve periods, six for day and six for night. The lengths of the periods were adjusted to the seasons but generally coincided with two of our hours. Each “hour” was named:
Midnight to 2:00 a.m.—the hour of the Rat
2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.—the hour of the Ox
4:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m.—the hour of the Tiger
6:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.—the hour of the Hare
8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.—the hour of the Dragon
10:00 a.m. to noon—the hour of the Snake
Noon to 2:00 p.m.—the hour of the Horse
2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.—the hour of the Ram
4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.—the hour of the Monkey
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.—the hour of the Cock
8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.—the hour of the Dog
10:00 p.m. to midnight—the hour of the Boar
The hours were often marked by the ringing of the temple bells. Midnight began the “ninth” time, 2:00 a.m. the “eighth” time, 4:00 a.m. the “seventh” time, until the end of the “fourth” time at noon when the series started again.
In this story, units of time are measured by the old Japanese system. Two and a half hours, therefore, would be about equal to five of our hours. The first quarter of the hour of the Rat would be 12:30 a.m.
Distance was measured in ri, which equaled about 2.44 miles. A cho was about 352 feet. Because a shaku measured just over eleven and a half inches, the English term foot has been used to indicate that length.
TÕKAIDÕ ROAD MAP
TÕKAIDÕ MAP 2
Each day is a journey
and the journey itself, home.
Basho 1689
THE TLKAIDL ROAD
Genroku 15, the Year of the Horse (1702)
CHAPTER 1
BEWARE THE STOPPING MIND
Next to Cat’s room in the House of the Perfumed Lotus a game of Naked Islanders was in riotous progress. Five of Old Jug Face’s third-rank courtesans were dancing to the thin, rhythmic whap of a hand drum and the staccato notes of a samisen’s catgut strings. When the music stopped the women froze. Anyone who moved had to take something off.
As the jars of rice wine emptied and were refilled by silent attendants, the dancers found it more difficult to stay motionless during the drum’s silences. Around the women’s feet, their silk robes and underrobes and their long brocade sashes swirled in a shimmering lake of color. Their stiff, white, split-toed cotton socks floated like ducks on top.
The game had reached the point where the guests joined in. Apparently one of the men was dancing with an undergarment draped over his head. Cat could hear its owner’s giggles and playful slaps as she tried to retrieve it.
As Cat knelt, watching her own guest die, she heard the merrymaking as she would have heard a distant waterfall or a windstorm. She was still wearing her thinly quilted lavender silk robe and a heavy brocade sash. Over it she wore a full, plum-colored satin coat embroidered with peacocks and crimson maple leaves. It kept her warm in the chill of the eleventh month. Its heavy, trailing sleeves were folded neatly across her thighs, as though she were a guest at a tea ceremony.
The soft light of the floor lantern outlined the long slope of Cat’s neck rising into the glossy black loops and wings of her hairdo. The collars of her robes were set far back to reveal the most alluring part of a woman’s body, the sensuous, vulnerable curve of spine and nape. The rush light glowed on Cat’s face, delicate and slender as a melon seed. The gold of its flame was reflected in the dark brown irises of Cat’s eyes.
Cat had swallow’s eyes, long and curved. Her feathery black eyebrows arched high and symmetrical as a silkworm moth’s antennae. She had brows that physiognomists said belonged to someone who made plans and carried them out. Her narrow, high-bridged nose and the full lips of her small mouth cast shadows across her chalky-white cheek.
Cat was as cultured as she was beautiful. She was the secret daughter of a daimyM, Lord Asano, and his outside-wife. She had been trained in music and literature and art. She had never thought she would use her skills in a house of assignation in Edo’s pleasure district, but then she couldn’t have foreseen the tragedy that had brought ruin and disgrace to her mother and father.
A year ago Cat, whose real name was Kinume, Golden Plum, had arrived here on foot. Palanquins were not allowed in Edo’s pleasure district, the Yoshiwara. She had hidden herself under a striped travel cloak and large-brimmed hat of woven sedge. Two of her dead father’s former box bearers had followed single file with a large wicker chest slung on a pole between them. The chest had held Cat’s remaining silk robes and sashes and her favorite books and scrolls, her matched, lacquered cosmetic set, her writing box, and a few precious keepsakes.
Cat herself had signed the contract with the owner of the House of the Carp where she would live. By the time her grief-stricken mother learned what she had done, it was too late to change her decision.
When Cat’s high wooden pattens clattered across the slate paving of the House of the Carp’s entryway, she had been struck by doubt so sudden and intense, she had almost turned around and left. But Cat’s nature wasn’t to quit what she had begun. She had hidden her fear and grief and loneliness behind a lovely, impassive mask ever since.
The usual custom was to give oneself a new name when starting out on an important enterprise. A different name was especially vital in Cat’s case, to keep her real identity a secret. Her friend Plover had begun calling her Koneko, Little Cat.
Plover used the nickname affectionately, and it caught on. Others began calling her Cat because she was as graceful and aloof and unpredictable as her namesake. But Golden Plum couldn’t replace her sorrow the way the nickname Cat replaced her old name and identity. She could only do her duty as the daughter of a lord and a warrior and endure her fate without complaint or self-pity.
She moved through her duties in the assignation house called the Perfumed Lotus with the grace and reserve of her class and breeding. She already had attained the second rank here, but she preferred to act the part of tayu, grand courtesan—to dazzle her guests with her wit, to stand on ceremony, to talk little, and to be hard to please.
She’d often been known to refuse to grant her favors, a luxury only the tayu enjoyed. And always, Cat’s guests had to spend a long time charming her before she would consent to undo her sash. So it had been this evening. Now it seemed she would be spared the necessity of politely spurning this guest.
With her legs demurely under her and the toes of one white-clad foot overlapping those of the other, Cat sat back on her ankles. The cool, tight weave of the thick, rigid tatami mats covering the wooden floor gave slightly under the pressure of her toes and knees. Cat leaned forward almost imperceptibly to study the guest.
At first she had thought, with relief, that he had passed out from drinking too much of Old Jug Face’s watered sake. That would have been fortuitous. He was one of those guests in whom unconsciousness was the most desirable trait.
Cat had planned to leave him there, sprawled on the thick mattresses piled three deep on the tatami. But that was when she had assumed he would awaken the next morning with a headache, nausea writhing like a tangle of squid in his stomach and a rueful realization that he would have to pay a great deal for the privilege of feeling so bad.
The heavy robe of wadded yellow cotton bearing the crest of the House of the Perfumed Lotus was bunched up under him, revealing bowed, hairy legs that sprawled carelessly. Saliva oozed in a froth from his half-opened lips and dangled in a thin rope from his chin. His wiry black topknot was askew. His eyes were open.
Without rising from her knees, Cat moved closer. She laid two pale, slender, impeccably manicured fingers on his neck. Nothing. Not a flutter of a heartbeat. The customer had left his homely body, never to return. The next occupants would be small, white, and legless. Already a hardy fly, an émigré from the privy, was circling solicitously.
Cat felt panic rising from the seat of her soul, behind her navel. She drew several deep breaths. She needed to be calm. She needed to think.
Soon the watchman would strike midnight, the hour of the Rat, on his wooden clappers. At midnight Centipede would close the small door in the Great Gate. He would lock the corpse into the pleasure district and into Cat’s company until cock’s crow.
Cat was sure the guest had been murdered. The murder weapon, or what was left of it, lay on the lacquered tray that also served as a table. The blowfish had been cleaned carelessly for a deadly purpose.