Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [206]
Love was like a toothache. When Otsū was busy, it did not bother her, but when the remembrance struck her, she was seized by the urge to go out on the highways again, to search for him, to find him, to place her head on his chest and shed tears of happiness.
Silently, she started walking. Where was he? Of all the sorrows that beset living beings, surely the most gnawing, the most wretched, the most agonizing, was not to be able to lay eyes on the person one pined for. Tears streaming down her cheeks, she walked on.
The heavy swords with their worn fittings meant nothing to her. How could she have dreamed she was carrying Musashi’s own belongings?
Jōtarō, sensing he had done something wrong, followed sadly a short distance behind. Then, as Otsū turned into the gate at the Arakida house, he ran up to her and asked, “Are you angry? About what I said?”
“Oh, no, it’s nothing.”
“I’m sorry, Otsū. I really am.”
“It’s not your fault. I just feel kind of sad. But don’t worry about it. I’m going to find out what Master Arakida wants. You go back to your work.”
Arakida Ujitomi called his home the House of Study. He had converted part of it into a school, attended not only by the shrine maidens but also by forty or fifty other children from the three counties belonging to Ise Shrine. He was trying to impart to the young a type of learning not currently very popular: the study of ancient Japanese history, which in the more sophisticated towns and cities was considered irrelevant. The early history of the country was intimately connected with Ise Shrine and its lands, but this was an age when people tended to confuse the fate of the nation with that of the warrior class, and what had happened in the distant past counted for little. Ujitomi was fighting a lonely battle to plant the seeds of an earlier, more traditional culture among the young people from the shrine area. While others might claim provincial regions had nothing to do with the national destiny, Ujitomi took a different view. If he could teach the local children about the past, perhaps, he thought, its spirit would one day thrive like a great tree in the sacred forest.
With perseverance and devotion, he talked to the children each day about the Chinese classics and the Record of Ancient Matters, the earliest history of Japan, hoping that his charges would eventually come to value these books. He had been doing this for more than ten years. To his way of thinking, Hideyoshi might seize control of the country and proclaim himself regent, Tokugawa Ieyasu might become the omnipotent “barbarian-subduing” shōgun, but young children should not, like their elders, mistake the lucky star of some military hero for the beautiful sun. If he labored patiently, the young would come to understand that it was the great Sun Goddess, not an uncouth warrior-dictator, who symbolized the nation’s aspirations.
Arakida emerged from his spacious classroom, his face a little sweaty. As the children flew out like a swarm of bees and darted quickly off to their homes, a shrine maiden told him Otsū was waiting. Somewhat flustered, he said, “That’s right. I sent for her, didn’t I? I completely forgot. Where is she?”
Otsū was just outside the house, where she had been standing for some time listening to Arakida’s lecture. “Here I am,” she called. “Did you want me?”
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. Come inside.”
He led her to his private study, but before sitting down, pointed to the objects she was carrying and asked what they were. She explained how she came to have them; he squinted and stared suspiciously at the swords. “Ordinary worshipers wouldn’t come here with things like that,” he said. “And they weren’t there last evening. Somebody must have come inside the walls in the middle of the night.”
Then, with a distasteful expression on his face, he grumbled, “This may be some samurai’s idea of a joke, but I don’t like