Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [82]
The world outside these great white walls had changed more than most of the people inside realized. For years they had boasted, loafed, and played around, and time had, as it will, passed them by. Today their eyes had been opened by their disgraceful loss to an unknown country swordsman.
A little before noon, one of the servants came to the dōjō and reported that a man who called himself Musashi was at the door, requesting admittance. Asked what sort of a fellow he was, the servant replied that he was a rōnin, that he hailed from Miyamoto in Mimasaka, was twenty-one or twenty-two years old, about six feet tall, and seemed rather dull. His hair, uncombed for at least a year, was carelessly tied up behind in a reddish mop, and his clothing was too filthy to tell whether it was black or brown, plain or figured. The servant, while admitting that he might be mistaken, thought he detected an odor about the man. He did have on his back one of the webbed leather sacks people called warriors’ study bags, and this did probably mean he was a shugyōsha, one of those samurai, so numerous these days, who wandered about devoting their every waking hour to the study of swordsmanship. Nevertheless, the servant’s overall impression was that this Musashi was distinctly out of place at the Yoshioka School.
If the man had simply been asking for a meal, there would have been no problem. But when the group heard that the rustic intruder had come to the great gate to challenge the famous Yoshioka Seijūrō to a bout, they burst into uproarious laughter. Some argued for turning him away without further ado, while others said they should first find out what style he employed and the name of his teacher.
The servant, as amused as anyone else, left and came back to report that the visitor had, as a boy, learned the use of the truncheon from his father and had later on picked up what he could from warriors passing through the village. He left home when he was seventeen and “for reasons of his own” spent his eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth years immersed in scholarly studies. All the previous year he had been alone in the mountains, with the trees and the mountain spirits as his only teachers. Consequently, he couldn’t lay claim to any particular style or teacher. But in the future he hoped to learn the teachings of Kiichi Hōgen, master the essence of the Kyōhachi Style, and emulate the great Yoshioka Kempō by creating a style of his own, which he had already decided to call the Miyamoto Style. Despite his many flaws, this was the goal toward which he proposed to work with all his heart and soul.
It was an honest and unaffected answer, the servant conceded, but the man had a country accent and stammered at almost every word. The servant obligingly provided his listeners with an imitation, again throwing them into gales of laughter.
The man must be out of his senses. To proclaim that his goal was to create a style of his own was sheer madness. By way of enlightening the lout, the students sent the servant out again, this time to ask whether the visitor had appointed anyone to take his corpse away after the bout.
To this Musashi replied, “If by any chance I should be killed, it makes no difference whether you discard my body on Toribe Mountain or throw it into the Kamo River with the garbage. Either way, I promise not to hold it against you.”
His way of answering this time, said the servant, was very clear, with nothing of the clumsiness of his earlier replies.
After a moment’s hesitation, someone said, “Let him in!”
That was how it started, with the disciples thinking they would cut the newcomer up a bit, then throw him out. In the very first bout, however, it was the school’s champion who came away the loser. His arm was broken clean through. Only a bit of skin kept his wrist attached to his forearm.
One by one others accepted the stranger’s challenge, and one by one they went down in ignominious defeat. Several were wounded seriously, and Musashi’s wooden sword dripped with blood. After about the third loss, the disciples’ mood turned