Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [436]
“Iori,” he called, “get some rope and tie up this timber. Then drag it down to the riverbank.”
When that was done, Musashi propped his ax against a tree and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his elbow. He then went down and stripped the bark off the trees with a hatchet. When darkness fell, they built a bonfire with the scraps and found blocks of wood to use as pillows.
“Interesting work, isn’t it?” said Musashi.
With perfect honesty, Iori answered, “I don’t think it’s interesting at all. I didn’t have to become your pupil to learn how to do this.”
“You’ll like it better as time goes on.”
As autumn waned, the insect voices faded into silence. Leaves withered and fell. Musashi and Iori finished their cabin and addressed themselves to the task of making the land ready for planting.
One day while he was surveying the land, Musashi suddenly found himself thinking it was like a diagram of the social unrest that lasted for a century after the Ōnin War. Such thoughts aside, it was not an encouraging picture.
Unknown to Musashi, Hōtengahara had over the centuries been buried many times by volcanic ash from Mount Fuji, and the Tone River had repeatedly flooded the flatlands. When the weather was fair, the land became bone dry, but whenever there were heavy rains, the water carved out new channels, carrying great quantities of dirt and rock along with it. There was no principal stream into which the smaller ones flowed naturally, the nearest thing to this being a wide basin that lacked sufficient capacity to either water or drain the area as a whole. The most urgent need was obvious: to bring the water under control.
Still, the more he had looked, the more he had questioned why the area was undeveloped. “It won’t be easy,” he thought, excited by the challenge it posed. Joining water and earth to create productive fields was not much different from leading men and women in such a way that civilization might bloom. To Musashi it seemed that his goal was in complete agreement with his ideals of swordsmanship.
He had come to see the Way of the Sword in a new light. A year or two earlier, he had wanted only to conquer all rivals, but now the idea that the sword existed for the purpose of giving him power over other people was unsatisfying. To cut people down, to triumph over them, to display the limits of one’s strength, seemed increasingly vain. He wanted to conquer himself, to make life itself submit to him, to cause people to live rather than die. The Way of the Sword should not be used merely for his own perfection. It should be a source of strength for governing people and leading them to peace and happiness.
He realized his grand ideals were no more than dreams, and would remain so as long as he lacked the political authority to implement them. But here in this wasteland, he needed neither rank nor power. He plunged into the struggle with joy and enthusiasm.
Day in and day out, stumps were uprooted, gravel sifted; land leveled, soil and rocks made into dikes. Musashi and Iori worked from before dawn until after the stars were shining bright in the sky.
Their relentless toil attracted attention. Villagers passing by often stopped, stared, and commented.
“What do they think they’re doing?”
“How can they live in a place like that?”
“Isn’t the boy old San’emon’s son?”
Everyone laughed, but not all let it go at that. One man came out of genuine kindness and said, “I hate to tell you this, but you’re wasting your time. You can break your backs making a field here, but one storm and it’ll be gone overnight.”
When he saw they were still at it several days later, he seemed a bit offended. “All you’re doing here, I tell you, is making a lot of water holes where they won’t do any good.”
A few days later he concluded that