Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [515]
“I give up,” said Tadaaki, abruptly dropping back several paces. They had agreed it was not to be a fight to the finish. Either man could withdraw by acknowledging defeat.
Springing like a beast of prey, Kojirō brought the Drying Pole into action with a downward stroke of whirlwind force and speed. Though Tadaaki ducked just in time, his topknot flew up and was lopped off. Tadaaki himself, while dodging, executed a brilliant reprisal, slicing off some six inches of Kojirō’s sleeve.
“Coward!” rose the cry from the students, whose faces burned with rage. By seizing on his opponent’s capitulation as the opening for an attack, Kojirō had violated the samurai’s code of ethics.
Every one of the students started for Kojirō.
He responded by flying with the speed of a cormorant to a large jujube tree at one end of the garden and half hiding himself behind the trunk. His eyes shifted with intimidating rapidity.
“Did you see it?” he shouted. “Did you see who won?”
“They saw it,” said Tadaaki. “Hold off!” he told his men, sheathing his sword and returning to the veranda of his study.
Summoning Omitsu, he told her to tie up his hair. While she was doing this, he caught his breath. His chest glistened with rivulets of sweat.
An old saying came back to his mind: it is easy to surpass a predecessor, but difficult to avoid being surpassed by a successor. He’d been enjoying the fruits of hard training in his youth, complacent in the knowledge that his Ittō Style was no less flourishing than the Yagyū Style. Meanwhile society was giving birth to new geniuses like Kojirō. The realization came as a bitter shock, but he was not the sort of man to ignore it.
When Omitsu was finished, he said, “Give our young guest some water to rinse his mouth out with and show him back to the guest room.”
The faces of the students around him were white with shock. Some were forcing back tears; others stared resentfully at their master.
“We’ll assemble in the dōjō,” he said. “Now.” He himself led the way. Tadaaki took his place on the raised seat in front and silently contemplated the three rows of his followers sitting facing him.
At length he lowered his eyes and said quietly, “I fear that I, too, have become old. As I look back, it seems to me my best days as a swordsman were when I defeated that devil Zenki. By the time this school was opened and people began talking about the Ono group on Saikachi Slope, calling the Ittō Style unbeatable, I’d already passed my peak as a swordsman.”
The meaning of the words was so alien to their customary way of thinking that the students could not believe their ears.
His voice became firmer, and he looked directly at their doubting, discontented faces. “In my opinion, this is something that happens to all men. Age creeps up on us while we’re not looking. Times change. The followers surpass their leaders. A younger generation opens up a new way…. This is the way it ought to be, for the world advances only through change. Yet this is inadmissible in the field of swordsmanship. The Way of the Sword must be a way that does not permit a man to age.
“Ittōsai … I don’t know if he’s still alive. I’ve had no word from my master for years. After Koganegahara, he took the tonsure and retreated to the mountains. His aim, he said, was to study the sword, to practice Zen, to search for the Way of Life and Death, to climb the great peak of perfect enlightenment.
“Now it’s my turn. After today, I could no longer hold my head up before my master…. I regret I haven’t lived a better life.”
“M-m-master!” broke in Negoro Hachikurō. “You say you lost, but we don’t believe you’d lose to a man like Kojirō under normal circumstances, even if he is young. There must have been something wrong today.”
“Something wrong?” Tadaaki shook his head and chuckled. “Nothing wrong. Kojirō’s young. But that’s not why I lost. I lost because the times have changed.”
“What does that mean?”
“Listen and see.” He looked from Hachikurō to the other silent faces. “I’ll try to make it brief, because Kojirō is waiting