Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [87]
Contemplating the skill, concentration and devotion put into making wares, even as cheap as these, made Musashi feel he still had a long way to go if he was ever to reach the level of perfection in swordsmanship that he aspired to. The thought was a sobering one, for in the past three weeks he’d visited other well-known training centers in Kyoto besides the Yoshioka School and had begun to wonder whether he had not been too critical of himself since his confinement at Himeji. His expectation had been to find Kyoto full of men who had mastered the martial arts. It was, after all, the imperial capital, as well as the former seat of the Ashikaga shogunate, and it had long been a gathering place for famous generals and legendary warriors. During his stay, however, he had not found a single training center that had taught him anything to be genuinely grateful for. Instead, at each school he had experienced disappointment. Though he always won his bouts, he was unable to decide whether this was because he was good or his opponents were bad. In either case, if the samurai he had met were typical, the country was in sorry shape.
Encouraged by his success, he had reached the point of taking a certain pride in his expertise. But now, reminded of the danger of vanity, he felt chastened. He mentally bowed in deep respect to the clay-smudged old men at the wheel and started up the steep slope to Kiyomizudera.
He had not gone far when a voice called to him from below. “You there, sir. The rōnin!”
“Do you mean me?” asked Musashi, turning around.
Judging from the man’s padded cotton garment, his bare legs, and the pole he carried, he was a palanquin bearer by trade. From behind his beard, he said, politely enough for one of his lowly status, “Sir, is your name Miyamoto?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” The man turned and went down toward Chawan Hill.
Musashi watched him enter what appeared to be a teahouse. Passing through the area a while earlier, he had noticed a large crowd of porters and palanquin bearers standing about in a sunny spot. He couldn’t imagine who had sent one of them to ask his name but supposed that whoever it was would soon come to meet him. He stood there awhile, but when no one appeared, resumed his climb.
He stopped along the way to look at several well-known temples, and at each of them he bowed and said two prayers. One was: “Please protect my sister from harm.” The other was: “Please test the lowly Musashi with hardship. Let him become the greatest swordsman in the land, or let him die.”
Arriving at the edge of a cliff, he dropped his basket hat on the ground and sat down. From there he could look out over the whole city of Kyoto. As he sat clasping his knees, a simple, but powerful, ambition welled up in his young breast.
“I want to lead an important life. I want to do it because I was born a human being.”
He had once read that in the tenth century two rebels named Taira no Masakado and Fujiwara no Sumitomo, both wildly ambitious, had gotten together and decided that if they emerged from the wars victorious, they would divide Japan up between them. The story was probably apocryphal to begin with, but Musashi remembered thinking at the time how stupid and unrealistic it would have been for them to believe they could carry out so grandiose a scheme. Now, however, he no longer felt it laughable. While his own dream was of a different sort, there were certain similarities. If the young cannot harbor great dreams in their souls, who can? At the moment Musashi was imagining how he could create a place of his own in the world.
He thought of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, of their visions of unifying Japan and of the many battles they had fought to that end. But it was clear that the path to greatness no longer lay in winning battles. Today the people wanted only the peace for which they’d thirsted so long. And as Musashi considered the long, long struggle Tokugawa Ieyasu had had to endure to make this desire a reality, he