'Sooner or later, I will finish'
30th July 2011
There are many wonderful stories about Yamaoka Tesshu. Here are a few of them.
...
Japan began the year with civil war. It was January 1868: a few weeks before, the shogun had handed his powers back to the emperor but the transition soon unravelled into fighting.
The shogun retreated from Kyoto to his stronghold in Edo, the city that would become Tokyo. It did not take the imperial army long to follow.
While shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu did not seem keen to continue fighting, any emissary sent to negotiate a surrender was bound to be captured or killed before reaching the imperial command centre about 150km away.
It looked as if Edo – and its million or so inhabitants – would be plunged into war. And they might well have been if not for a 33-year-old samurai in the shogun’s personal guard.
Yamaoka Tesshu, who volunteered for the mission, was soon behind enemy lines. He found the streets lined with troops. Another man might have tried to travel covertly but Tesshu just walked down the middle of the road.
When he reached a place where he thought imperial commander Saigo Takamori might be staying, he announced himself by bellowing, ‘I have come from the house of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, enemy of the court!’
Tesshu later recounted that there were probably a hundred people in the house but they simply stared at him.
It turned out that Saigo was not there so Tesshu carried on walking. None of the sentries stopped him and he finally made his way to the command centre. Something about Tesshu made Saigo, himself a figure of considerable presence, listen.
After they worked out the preliminary terms of surrender, Saigo remarked: ‘I should have you thrown into prison for infiltrating the camp.’
‘Exactly what I would have wished for,’ said Tesshu. ‘Please do so.’
Saigo laughed. ‘Why don’t we have a drink?’
They had more than one. Saigo later said of the younger man: ‘He has no interest in reputation, nor in position or money. He has no need even of life itself. How is one to deal with a man like that?’
That baffling man, Yamaoka Tesshu, was born on July 23 in 1836. After being orphaned at the age of 17, he left his five younger brothers with his relatives, giving them almost all the money he had inherited to pay for his siblings’ care.
He rarely had much money because he was always donating it to charity. Rather than pursue wealth, he pursued his obsessions: swordsmanship, calligraphy and Zen. He found time for these even in his years of public office, when he served first in the new imperial government then as an aide to the emperor.
It was Saigo who recommended him for the post. Others protested – place a man who had once served the court’s enemy beside the head of that court? Was Saigo mad? But, believing that Tesshu would be a good influence on the young emperor, Saigo insisted.
Tesshu agreed to serve at court for 10 years. Once that time was up, he was free to devote all his time to his obsessions. His daily schedule: swordsmanship from 6am to 9am, calligraphy and painting from 10am to 4pm or 5pm, then Zen meditation or sutra-copying at night.
To Tesshu, these things were not separate; poor swordsmanship or calligraphy reflected a lack of spiritual growth.
Though he was reckoned a master swordsman by most, the memory of a bout he had lost when he was 28 haunted him. If the conversation lapsed, he would cross two pipes like swords, seeking the reason for his defeat. Answers sometimes suggested themselves to him at night. He would wake his wife up and get her to hold a wooden sword while he wielded another. (It has not been recorded whether his wife ever, at such moments, smacked him with the sword.)
He also tackled the problem through meditation. And it was during contemplation that the answer finally arrived when he was 45 years old. This is how he described the moment: ‘I reached the state of no-enemy… As I recalled my previous notions of skilfulness and ineptness, fighting and no fighting, I realised that those dichotomies have nothing to do with the opponent; all those things are creations of one’s mind. If there is self, there is an enemy; if there is no self, there is no enemy.’
In its original state, the mind is as clear as a still pond. If the moon hangs over the pond, the water simply reflects it back: an instant and appropriate reaction. But if the pond is stirred up and the water clouded, it cannot do this.
To dwell on an opponent’s supposed strength or weakness is to stir up the mind. If the mind thinks the opponent is stronger, it becomes afraid and the body, tense. Neither can respond properly. Caught by the image of the enemy it has created, the mind stops – and becomes stuck.
Galvanised by this realisation, Tesshu established his own school of swordsmanship. He called it Muto: No Sword. ‘ “No sword” means “no mind”; “no mind” means “the mind that abides nowhere”. If the mind stops, the opponent appears; if the mind remains fluid, no enemy exists,’ he wrote in an explanation of the school’s name.
The training at his school was, like his own, arduous. Beginners had to spend at least three years on only one move: raining blows down on the opponent’s head. This may be why there are only a handful of Muto swordsmen today. But Tesshu’s disciples and their students played a great role in the development of kendo, the modern form of Japanese swordsmanship.
Tesshu’s achievements in swordsmanship were immense. So were his achievements in calligraphy. On average, he brushed about 500 sheets a day though his record was 1,300 pieces.
In the final eight years of his life, he produced at least a million works, mainly to raise funds for charity.
A friend once commented on the volume of his output. ‘I’ve just begun,’ Tesshu replied. ‘It will take a long time to reach 35 million.’ The figure referred to the number of people in Japan at the time; his brush was a way of helping fellow travellers on the road.
The amount of time he spent on his three obsessions might seem self-indulgent. A prominent activist once asked him: ‘When you meditate, are you serving your lord? Are you serving the nation? The people?’
But Tesshu understood that to develop the self was to serve others and that true service could not be accomplished without devoting time to the self.
Two years before his death from stomach cancer, the 51-year-old Tesshu declared that he was going to copy out the whole Buddhist canon. A friend who heard this was astounded: ‘Even if you live to be a hundred, you couldn’t possibly copy more than half.’
Tesshu assured his friend that he was not mad. He’d soon be exchanging this body for another, he said. ‘Sooner or later, somewhere, someplace, I will finish.’
Showing posts with label 幕末編. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 幕末編. Show all posts
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Owning up to your choices
20th May 2010
An afterword to the Bakumatsu arc. Not PG-rated at all but don't let that stop you from reading it.
...
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I’d been wanting to write about 1860s Japan for a while, in particular the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate – years of confusion, drawn swords and foreign devils that ended one of the stablest regimes the country had ever known.
But if you’re going to do one piece, said a voice in my head, why not do a bunch of them? If you start with 1853, when the Americans and their gunships arrived, and finish around 1900, when the new imperial government had more or less got the hang of things, that gives you, what, 50 years of history? Should be good for at least four columns. Which, in a fortnightly gig, means 10 weeks of not having to worry about what to write next.
Something whispered misgivings but it went unheard against the louder, much louder voice that boomed, ‘Eight Weeks Free Of Columnist’s Block!’
So I began the research last year for the series I thought of as my Bakumatsu arc, a nod to the Japanese name for the end (matsu) of the shogunate (bakufu).
Six months later, the loud, pompom-waving cheerleader that promised the reprieve from Columnist’s Block had slunk away. All that was left was the little warning voice.
And this is what it said at the beginning and throughout the months of research: it won’t work.
Surrounded by history books and notes punctuated with the occasional exclamation mark of despair, I was forced to admit what I had known from the start – that there was no way I could fit a period as complex as the Bakumatsu into a newspaper column, not even five of them.
I mean, just the number of the players alone! They made War And Peace look like a budget production. To make things fit, I had to leave out swathes of history and 98.7 per cent of the cast of thousands. Writing about the past? I was running through it, apologising to ghosts.
But there was a much bigger problem: sources.
The horror began on a sunny day last year. I’d just finished taking photos of an old bridge when I walked past a historical plaque.
I stopped to read it. I reread it. Not trusting my eyes or my Japanese, I read it again. No. No, no, no, no, no.
Even on the third reading, the words on the plaque didn’t change. They declared that Sakuma Shozan, a leading 19th century proponent of Western knowledge, had been assassinated in that spot. Trouble was, I’d just read in a book that he’d been killed in a temple on the other side of town. And I was relying on that book – written by a distinguished historian – for much of the planned columns.
This wasn’t an issue of interpretation, a matter of arguing why the shogunate collapsed or how important a particular pact was in bringing it down. It was a question of who had got their facts right.
The nightmare didn’t end there. In March 1866, pro-emperor activist Sakamoto Ryoma was about to go to sleep in a Kyoto inn when a maid came running to warn him of a shogunate raid. She had seen the police through a window while taking a bath and dashed out. Some sources say she was completely naked; another notes that she took the time to throw on a robe but did not belt it. Yet another version has Ryoma, not the maid, as the one in the bath and claims that he fled through a window in the buff.
Who to believe? I began checking sources against each other. If Historian A’s account of an event corresponded with the versions by Historians B and C, I thought, it was bound to be more accurate.
And in many instances, Historians B and Co. did agree with Historian A. But only because, as the source attributions revealed, they were quoting Historian A. In a system where experts constantly cite each other, a mistake can be perpetuated for years.
The despair that descended was now so familiar we were on first-name terms.
A huge question mark hung over the historians’ work. But what about the primary sources? Surely those who had lived through the Bakumatsu and survived to write memoirs or to be interviewed could be trusted?
Conflicting accounts proved otherwise. Two people remembering a battle 50 years later will not tell the same story. Apart from lapses in memory, there is also the inseparable tint – or taint – of character. Anyone speaking of the past is bound to colour it: He wants himself, his comrades and his enemies remembered a certain way.
Despair was back again, showing me pictures of its children, Suspicion and Tight Feeling In The Stomach.
With so much that could not be verified, my account of the Bakumatsu would only be as reliable as a retelling of a reworking of a record of a recollection. It seemed like the most scrupulous thing to do would be to abandon the project – even if it meant throwing away half a year’s work.
But Despair reminded me that the last time we met, it was to angst over the unreliability of information in general. Whether the matter was the state of an inn maid’s undress or the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers were melting, it might be impossible to be certain about anything.
Yet whether the issue is history or climate change, walking away does not seem to be the answer.
In the face of so much uncertainty, it is still possible to choose and – more important – to be honest about the limits of your choice. Acknowledging the shifting ground under your feet makes it easier to stand in it – and to take a different stance if something new is revealed when the winds change.
The past four pieces that appeared under this label were my Bakumatsu. They are not authoritative essays on the period but a trail of breadcrumb words leading to a time 150 years ago, when Japan was plunged into crisis and men and women at every level of society and all sides of the conflict responded with courage, fear, self-interest, self-sacrifice, irrationalism, imagination and every shade of complexity available to the human heart.
Breadcrumb trails don’t last but if this one took you far enough to start looking for your own Bakumatsu – or just elsewhere for a little while – it’ll have lasted long enough.
The Ninomaru palace in Kyoto's Nijo castle where, in November 1867, shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu summoned all the feudal lords present in the city and announced his decision to return his political powers to the throne. This marked the end of over two centuries of military rule by the Tokugawa house and paved the way for Japan to become a modern nation.
Before throwing away the epic notes, I thought that I'd take a few souvenir shots of some of them. Each sheet is A4.
20th May 2010
An afterword to the Bakumatsu arc. Not PG-rated at all but don't let that stop you from reading it.
...
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
I’d been wanting to write about 1860s Japan for a while, in particular the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate – years of confusion, drawn swords and foreign devils that ended one of the stablest regimes the country had ever known.
But if you’re going to do one piece, said a voice in my head, why not do a bunch of them? If you start with 1853, when the Americans and their gunships arrived, and finish around 1900, when the new imperial government had more or less got the hang of things, that gives you, what, 50 years of history? Should be good for at least four columns. Which, in a fortnightly gig, means 10 weeks of not having to worry about what to write next.
Something whispered misgivings but it went unheard against the louder, much louder voice that boomed, ‘Eight Weeks Free Of Columnist’s Block!’
So I began the research last year for the series I thought of as my Bakumatsu arc, a nod to the Japanese name for the end (matsu) of the shogunate (bakufu).
Six months later, the loud, pompom-waving cheerleader that promised the reprieve from Columnist’s Block had slunk away. All that was left was the little warning voice.
And this is what it said at the beginning and throughout the months of research: it won’t work.
Surrounded by history books and notes punctuated with the occasional exclamation mark of despair, I was forced to admit what I had known from the start – that there was no way I could fit a period as complex as the Bakumatsu into a newspaper column, not even five of them.
I mean, just the number of the players alone! They made War And Peace look like a budget production. To make things fit, I had to leave out swathes of history and 98.7 per cent of the cast of thousands. Writing about the past? I was running through it, apologising to ghosts.
But there was a much bigger problem: sources.
The horror began on a sunny day last year. I’d just finished taking photos of an old bridge when I walked past a historical plaque.
I stopped to read it. I reread it. Not trusting my eyes or my Japanese, I read it again. No. No, no, no, no, no.
Even on the third reading, the words on the plaque didn’t change. They declared that Sakuma Shozan, a leading 19th century proponent of Western knowledge, had been assassinated in that spot. Trouble was, I’d just read in a book that he’d been killed in a temple on the other side of town. And I was relying on that book – written by a distinguished historian – for much of the planned columns.
This wasn’t an issue of interpretation, a matter of arguing why the shogunate collapsed or how important a particular pact was in bringing it down. It was a question of who had got their facts right.
The nightmare didn’t end there. In March 1866, pro-emperor activist Sakamoto Ryoma was about to go to sleep in a Kyoto inn when a maid came running to warn him of a shogunate raid. She had seen the police through a window while taking a bath and dashed out. Some sources say she was completely naked; another notes that she took the time to throw on a robe but did not belt it. Yet another version has Ryoma, not the maid, as the one in the bath and claims that he fled through a window in the buff.
Who to believe? I began checking sources against each other. If Historian A’s account of an event corresponded with the versions by Historians B and C, I thought, it was bound to be more accurate.
And in many instances, Historians B and Co. did agree with Historian A. But only because, as the source attributions revealed, they were quoting Historian A. In a system where experts constantly cite each other, a mistake can be perpetuated for years.
The despair that descended was now so familiar we were on first-name terms.
A huge question mark hung over the historians’ work. But what about the primary sources? Surely those who had lived through the Bakumatsu and survived to write memoirs or to be interviewed could be trusted?
Conflicting accounts proved otherwise. Two people remembering a battle 50 years later will not tell the same story. Apart from lapses in memory, there is also the inseparable tint – or taint – of character. Anyone speaking of the past is bound to colour it: He wants himself, his comrades and his enemies remembered a certain way.
Despair was back again, showing me pictures of its children, Suspicion and Tight Feeling In The Stomach.
With so much that could not be verified, my account of the Bakumatsu would only be as reliable as a retelling of a reworking of a record of a recollection. It seemed like the most scrupulous thing to do would be to abandon the project – even if it meant throwing away half a year’s work.
But Despair reminded me that the last time we met, it was to angst over the unreliability of information in general. Whether the matter was the state of an inn maid’s undress or the rate at which the Himalayan glaciers were melting, it might be impossible to be certain about anything.
Yet whether the issue is history or climate change, walking away does not seem to be the answer.
In the face of so much uncertainty, it is still possible to choose and – more important – to be honest about the limits of your choice. Acknowledging the shifting ground under your feet makes it easier to stand in it – and to take a different stance if something new is revealed when the winds change.
The past four pieces that appeared under this label were my Bakumatsu. They are not authoritative essays on the period but a trail of breadcrumb words leading to a time 150 years ago, when Japan was plunged into crisis and men and women at every level of society and all sides of the conflict responded with courage, fear, self-interest, self-sacrifice, irrationalism, imagination and every shade of complexity available to the human heart.
Breadcrumb trails don’t last but if this one took you far enough to start looking for your own Bakumatsu – or just elsewhere for a little while – it’ll have lasted long enough.
The Ninomaru palace in Kyoto's Nijo castle where, in November 1867, shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu summoned all the feudal lords present in the city and announced his decision to return his political powers to the throne. This marked the end of over two centuries of military rule by the Tokugawa house and paved the way for Japan to become a modern nation.
Before throwing away the epic notes, I thought that I'd take a few souvenir shots of some of them. Each sheet is A4.
Friday, April 09, 2010
Bakumatsu arc #4: Restaurants, red-light districts and revolution
10th April 2010
PG-rated because the other instalments were and I don't want this one to feel left out.
...
Taking part in politics in the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate was not conducive to reaching a ripe old age.
Intimidated by the American warships that steamed up to Japan in 1853, the military government caved in to trade demands from the West. This sparked off a wave of anger in the country that eventually brought down the shogunate and led to the establishment of an emperor-centric government in 1868.
But the years leading up to this were dangerous ones for both those who supported the shogunate and those who opposed it. Apart from the battlefield deaths, there were also numerous fatalities from assassinations and forced suicides.
Pro-emperor activist Nakaoka Shintaro had his way of fortifying himself for a dangerous mission: he would go to a brothel. And according to his diary, he would run into the other members there, which meant that the rest of the evening was divided between talking about politics and making use of the facilities.
Much of the revolution seems to have been planned in red-light districts and restaurants. The reason usually given is that, in those times, these were the only two places where men could gather without drawing too much attention from the authorities. There were other meeting places. But the men do not seem to have tried too hard to use them.
In a quiet neighbourhood in the south-west of Kyoto city, a restaurant that served the activists still stands. Sumiya’s rooms – decorated with cloisonné and mother-of-pearl – stun even now but none of this can be seen from the front of the building, a severe stretch of dark wooden lattices.
This discretion matched the clandestine nature of the rebels’ work. Among those who gathered at the Sumiya were Sakamoto Ryoma and Saigo Takamori – key players in the anti-shogunate movement. Revolution could be an expensive business and they invited wealthy merchants to the restaurant in a bid to get them to donate to their cause.
Adding to the intrigue of those days, the Sumiya entertained customers from both sides. Members of the Shinsengumi special police force, who would have promptly arrested Ryoma had they seen him there, also favoured the restaurant, which was about 20 minutes’ walk away from their headquarters.
Banquets and dinner parties would be thrown at the Sumiya and geisha would be summoned – the restaurant was located in the Shimabara pleasure quarters – to sing and dance for the customers.
A party held one rainy evening in September 1863 is still remembered. Not long after its founding, the Shinsengumi split into two factions. One was headed by corps commander Serizawa Kamo. Prone to violent outbursts, he became even more unstable after his right-hand man died. His subordinate had been cornered in a brothel by the other faction earlier that month. Accused of extortion and neglecting his duties, he was pressured into commiting suicide there and then. The alternative was beheading, considered a dishonourable death.
Yet when the leader of the rival faction, Kondo Isami, invited Serizawa to a party at the Sumiya a number of days later, the commander attended with two of his men. Perhaps Kondo knew that the hard-drinking Serizawa would not turn down a chance to carouse.
Kondo made sure that the sake flowed and that there were women on hand to keep his guests’ cups filled.
By the time Serizawa and his men left, he had drunk so much that a palanquin had to be called to take him back to his quarters. His mistress joined him in his room and along with his subordinates and two women from the pleasure quarters, the revelry continued. It was only when they were too drunk to sit up that they went to sleep.
Outside, the rain kept falling. Undeterred by the storm, Kondo’s men went through the garden and into the house: they had come for the last of the Serizawa faction.
Serizawa tried to run but it did not take the assassins long to finish him off. The women of the pleasure district and one of his supporters fled in the uproar. Less lucky were the other subordinate and his mistress; they lay dead in the room where they had slept, their heads cut off.
The samurai’s fondness for red-light areas and restaurants meant that the women who worked there, whether as courtesans or maids, were in constant danger of being caught up in the violence of raids and assassinations.
But there were those who risked themselves willingly, entertaining clients from the other side in order to spy on them. The women may have done this because they believed in the cause they were supporting or because, like Ikumatsu the geisha, they had more personal reasons.
Ikumatsu was a geisha of the Sanbongi pleasure quarter, located near the Kamogawa with a view of the eastern hills beyond the river. She was a skilled dancer and musician but these may not have been the qualities that drew the attention of activist Katsura Kogoro. The samurai from the pro-emperor fief of Choshu was used to the attention of women. The photos of him in his youth – and the glib tongue he was said to have – explain his popularity.
Still, something about Ikumatsu prompted him to put up the huge sum needed to pay off her debts to her okiya, or geisha house, and buy her out. As a rebel leader, Katsura was forced at times to lie low until the attention of the shogunate forces shifted elsewhere. When Ikumatsu visited him in his hiding place, she would cause a stir because of her eye-catching kimono. Reckless this might have been but this side of her apparently captivated Katsura.
Meanwhile, radicals in Choshu were agitating for action. The fief was out of favour with the imperial court and they were convinced that this was because rival domains had usurped its position. On August 20, 1864, the Choshu troops that had gathered outside Kyoto advanced on the palace to eject the ‘interlopers’.
Hours later, the radicals were forced into retreat and the fires that broke out in the conflict destroyed thousands of homes. The furious court instructed the shogunate to punish Choshu and Katsura once again came into its sights, even though he had opposed the coup and did not take part in the fighting.
He went into hiding under a bridge on the Kamogawa, spending five days among the crowds of homeless who lived on the riverbanks. The story goes that Ikumatsu went to take him food and even when interrogated by the authorities, did not give him away.
Katsura managed to escape from Kyoto and about one and a half years later, represented Choshu in negotiations with Satsuma fief for an alliance that sealed the fate of the shogunate. He went on to become a prominent figure in the new imperial government. With him was Ikumatsu, whom he married.
About 150 years after the two of them met, lovers still pass under the bridges of the Kamogawa. But they live in a different Japan and as they wander beside the river, they do not have to risk their lives – though the same cannot be said of their hearts.
(All pictures taken at the Sumiya.)
10th April 2010
PG-rated because the other instalments were and I don't want this one to feel left out.
...
Taking part in politics in the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate was not conducive to reaching a ripe old age.
Intimidated by the American warships that steamed up to Japan in 1853, the military government caved in to trade demands from the West. This sparked off a wave of anger in the country that eventually brought down the shogunate and led to the establishment of an emperor-centric government in 1868.
But the years leading up to this were dangerous ones for both those who supported the shogunate and those who opposed it. Apart from the battlefield deaths, there were also numerous fatalities from assassinations and forced suicides.
Pro-emperor activist Nakaoka Shintaro had his way of fortifying himself for a dangerous mission: he would go to a brothel. And according to his diary, he would run into the other members there, which meant that the rest of the evening was divided between talking about politics and making use of the facilities.
Much of the revolution seems to have been planned in red-light districts and restaurants. The reason usually given is that, in those times, these were the only two places where men could gather without drawing too much attention from the authorities. There were other meeting places. But the men do not seem to have tried too hard to use them.
In a quiet neighbourhood in the south-west of Kyoto city, a restaurant that served the activists still stands. Sumiya’s rooms – decorated with cloisonné and mother-of-pearl – stun even now but none of this can be seen from the front of the building, a severe stretch of dark wooden lattices.
This discretion matched the clandestine nature of the rebels’ work. Among those who gathered at the Sumiya were Sakamoto Ryoma and Saigo Takamori – key players in the anti-shogunate movement. Revolution could be an expensive business and they invited wealthy merchants to the restaurant in a bid to get them to donate to their cause.
Adding to the intrigue of those days, the Sumiya entertained customers from both sides. Members of the Shinsengumi special police force, who would have promptly arrested Ryoma had they seen him there, also favoured the restaurant, which was about 20 minutes’ walk away from their headquarters.
Banquets and dinner parties would be thrown at the Sumiya and geisha would be summoned – the restaurant was located in the Shimabara pleasure quarters – to sing and dance for the customers.
A party held one rainy evening in September 1863 is still remembered. Not long after its founding, the Shinsengumi split into two factions. One was headed by corps commander Serizawa Kamo. Prone to violent outbursts, he became even more unstable after his right-hand man died. His subordinate had been cornered in a brothel by the other faction earlier that month. Accused of extortion and neglecting his duties, he was pressured into commiting suicide there and then. The alternative was beheading, considered a dishonourable death.
Yet when the leader of the rival faction, Kondo Isami, invited Serizawa to a party at the Sumiya a number of days later, the commander attended with two of his men. Perhaps Kondo knew that the hard-drinking Serizawa would not turn down a chance to carouse.
Kondo made sure that the sake flowed and that there were women on hand to keep his guests’ cups filled.
By the time Serizawa and his men left, he had drunk so much that a palanquin had to be called to take him back to his quarters. His mistress joined him in his room and along with his subordinates and two women from the pleasure quarters, the revelry continued. It was only when they were too drunk to sit up that they went to sleep.
Outside, the rain kept falling. Undeterred by the storm, Kondo’s men went through the garden and into the house: they had come for the last of the Serizawa faction.
Serizawa tried to run but it did not take the assassins long to finish him off. The women of the pleasure district and one of his supporters fled in the uproar. Less lucky were the other subordinate and his mistress; they lay dead in the room where they had slept, their heads cut off.
The samurai’s fondness for red-light areas and restaurants meant that the women who worked there, whether as courtesans or maids, were in constant danger of being caught up in the violence of raids and assassinations.
But there were those who risked themselves willingly, entertaining clients from the other side in order to spy on them. The women may have done this because they believed in the cause they were supporting or because, like Ikumatsu the geisha, they had more personal reasons.
Ikumatsu was a geisha of the Sanbongi pleasure quarter, located near the Kamogawa with a view of the eastern hills beyond the river. She was a skilled dancer and musician but these may not have been the qualities that drew the attention of activist Katsura Kogoro. The samurai from the pro-emperor fief of Choshu was used to the attention of women. The photos of him in his youth – and the glib tongue he was said to have – explain his popularity.
Still, something about Ikumatsu prompted him to put up the huge sum needed to pay off her debts to her okiya, or geisha house, and buy her out. As a rebel leader, Katsura was forced at times to lie low until the attention of the shogunate forces shifted elsewhere. When Ikumatsu visited him in his hiding place, she would cause a stir because of her eye-catching kimono. Reckless this might have been but this side of her apparently captivated Katsura.
Meanwhile, radicals in Choshu were agitating for action. The fief was out of favour with the imperial court and they were convinced that this was because rival domains had usurped its position. On August 20, 1864, the Choshu troops that had gathered outside Kyoto advanced on the palace to eject the ‘interlopers’.
Hours later, the radicals were forced into retreat and the fires that broke out in the conflict destroyed thousands of homes. The furious court instructed the shogunate to punish Choshu and Katsura once again came into its sights, even though he had opposed the coup and did not take part in the fighting.
He went into hiding under a bridge on the Kamogawa, spending five days among the crowds of homeless who lived on the riverbanks. The story goes that Ikumatsu went to take him food and even when interrogated by the authorities, did not give him away.
Katsura managed to escape from Kyoto and about one and a half years later, represented Choshu in negotiations with Satsuma fief for an alliance that sealed the fate of the shogunate. He went on to become a prominent figure in the new imperial government. With him was Ikumatsu, whom he married.
About 150 years after the two of them met, lovers still pass under the bridges of the Kamogawa. But they live in a different Japan and as they wander beside the river, they do not have to risk their lives – though the same cannot be said of their hearts.
(All pictures taken at the Sumiya.)
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