Disciple of the Wind (64 page)

Authors: Steve Bein

BOOK: Disciple of the Wind

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A final note about medieval Japan concerns women. Legally speaking, they had little say in matters of marriage and no rights whatsoever when it came to divorce. A man could divorce his wife by writing a short letter (three and a half lines long, to be precise), citing whatever reasons he liked. If she refused to leave, he could throw her bodily out of the house and no one could gainsay him. A woman could not rely on the law to protect her from an abusive husband, but by custom she could take shelter in a convent; two or three years as a nun effectively annulled her marriage.

This was but one of many double standards, almost all of which were to the woman’s disadvantage. The one counterexample in this book concerns ritual suicide (which, if you’ll recall, is the way Lady Oda ended her life after she learned Daigoro killed her son in a duel). Men of the samurai caste were expected to commit seppuku, or self-disembowelment. This was held to be the most painful form of death imaginable, and since samurai women were not deemed strong enough to go through with it, their method was different: they placed a knife point upward on the floor, then fell throat-first onto it. The idea was that if they lost their nerve at the last moment, they would have already lost their balance and their fate would be sealed. Whether women were not brave enough to perform seppuku, or simply not stupid enough to do it when given a better alternative, is a judgment I leave to you.

The most important historical discrepancy in this book is also the most obvious: no terrorists ever blew up Haneda’s Terminal 2. There was no ricin scare in Tokyo hospitals, nor any conspiracy to cause traffic deaths. The Divine Wind’s activities aside, I took 2010 as it was given to me. Matt Murton did break Ichiro Suzuki’s single season hit record, Jemaah Islamiyah was the most feared terrorist organization in East Asia, and there really is a pool hall called Billiards Bagus near Yamada-sensei’s home in Machida.

Incidentally, I know where Yamada’s house is—or rather, I’ve chosen which house is his on Google Earth, and I map Mariko’s comings and goings from there. For Daigoro’s peregrinations I use Google Earth and also period maps from his era. You can find a link to the best of these maps on my website, www.philosofiction.com, where you’ll also find links to armor diagrams, descriptions of period clothing, and other items of historical interest.

This brings me to another point. In talking with readers—which I very much enjoy, so please do send me an e-mail—one of the topics that often comes up is the degree of research required for these books. It has been suggested to me that I could get away with doing a lot less digging. You can imagine the Venn diagram mapping the sets of 1) people who read my books; 2) people who know so much about the Japanese educational system that they’d correct me if I had said Tokyo had 1,403 public elementary schools and not 1,304; and 3) people who will publicly lambaste me for getting the number wrong. These are not huge populations we’re dealing with here.

Nevertheless, I did spend a night researching Tokyo public schools. In 2010 the count was 1,304, and this probably has no influence whatsoever on the review you’re planning to post on Goodreads. So why bother with the research?

Part of it is that I also write as an academic, and so it’s ingrained in me to cite a source for just about everything I put to paper. (I’m always tempted to put a footnote after my name, citing my own birth certificate as the reference.) Another part of it, as I’m sure my friends and family will attest, is that I like to be right about stuff. The largest part is that worldbuilding is very important to me, especially when I’m building a world in which you’re supposed to believe in the supernatural. And then there’s the last part—a tiny part, I swear: if I get the rest of the details right, I figure you’re less likely to catch me when I tell you bald-faced lies.

For instance, Google Earth will not show you a Kikuchi Park in downtown Tokyo, for the simple reason that there isn’t one. I wanted a first-floor pool hall across the street from a public park, and when I couldn’t find one, I made it up. I named it Kikuchi Park because I’d just seen
Pacific Rim
and I really enjoyed seeing Rinko Kikuchi kick ass with a bo staff.

Many of my characters get their names this way. Mariko is the name of Logan’s great love in the
Wolverine
comics, and also the name of Miyamoto Usagi’s love interest in
Usagi Yojimbo
. Daigoro is both named and nicknamed after Ogami Daigoro, the Wolf Cub in the cult classic samurai series
Lone Wolf and Cub
. Furukawa Ujio shares his initials with another great schemer, Francis Underwood of
House of Cards
. Captain Kusama’s last name is one letter away from
kisama
, Japanese for “son of a bitch.” Three characters are named for my former Japanese professors. Others are named for friends.

Finally, the Kamaguchi-gumi shares all but one letter in common with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest yakuza clan. In the earliest drafts of
Daughter of the Sword
, my yakuzas did belong to the real-world Yamaguchis, but upon further consideration I decided this might well be suicidal. Yakuzas have been known to take punitive actions against authors who malign them in their books. So I’ll reiterate: my Kamaguchis are not based on any real live Yamaguchis, not one teeny bit.

—Steve Bein

Austin, Texas

September 2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many mahalos to everyone who assisted in the research for this book: Alex Embry and Diana Rowland for the cop stuff, D. P. Lyle for the medical stuff, and the Codex hivemind for every other topic under the sun. Alex was especially helpful in orchestrating police responses to a massive terrorist attack. Charlie Bee and Jess Sund were instrumental in figuring out the mechanics of Streaming Dawn. Luc Reid served as literary tech support, helping a technophobe and Luddite write intelligibly about computery stuff. Special thanks for proofreading go to my mother, and also to Tim Robinson.

My deepest gratitude goes to all of my readers. I think it was Mark Twain who said every time you choose to read a book, you choose not to read all the other ones. That makes picking up a new book an almost sacred decision. Thank you for putting that faith in me.

Thanks also to my beta readers, including Kris Bein, Kat Sherbo, Luc Reid, Kati Strande, and most especially my illustrious agent, Cameron McClure. Special thanks to my extraordinarily patient editor, Anne Sowards, who extended my deadline when plotting this book got hairy, and again to Cameron for helping to comb out the tangles. As with past books, Cameron and Anne were crucial in tightening the manuscript and making this the best book it could be.

I have been remiss in my last two acknowledgments pages for not thanking Allison Hiroto, who narrates the audio books and turns in one beautiful performance after the next. Chris McGrath continues to produce covers that make other authors envious. The beautiful and talented Sayuri Oyamada models for the cover, and made me feel really good about myself when she wrote to me via Facebook. All lifelong nerds should have the pleasure at least once in their lives of getting personal messages from a professional model.

Begrudging thanks are due once more to Michele, this time for getting me on Twitter, and once again, sincerest thanks for everything else.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Bein
teaches philosophy at Texas State University. He has a PhD in philosophy, and his graduate work took him to Nanzan University and Obirin University in Japan, where he translated a seminal work in the study of Zen Buddhism. He holds black belts in two American forms of combative martial arts and has trained in about two dozen other martial arts over the past twenty-some years. His short fiction has appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
,
Interzone
,
Writers of the Future
, and in international translation. He has been anthologized alongside authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, and Ursula K. Le Guin.