Musashi: Bushido Code (101 page)

Halfway down the hill, he began badgering Musashi for an answer to his proposal. "I'm ready to start today," he declared. "Just think, anywhere you go, you'll be able to ride the horse, and I'll be there to wait on you."

This elicited a noncommittal grunt. While Sannosuke had much to recommend him, Musashi questioned whether he should again put himself in the position of being responsible for a boy's future. Jōtarō—he had natural ability, but how had he benefited by attaching himself to Musashi? And now that he had disappeared to heaven knew where, Musashi felt his responsibility even more keenly. Still, Musashi thought, if a man dwells only on the dangers ahead, he cannot advance a single step, let alone make his way through life successfully. Furthermore, in the case of a child, no one, not even his parents, can actually guarantee his future. "Is it really possible to decide objectively what's good for a child and what's not?" he asked himself. "If it's a matter of developing Sannosuke's talents and guiding him in the right direction, I can do that. I guess that's about as much as anyone can do."

"Promise, won't you? Please," the boy insisted.

"Sannosuke, do you want to be a groom all your life?"

"Of course not. I want to be a samurai."

"That's what I thought. But if you come with me and become my pupil, you'll be in for a lot of rough times, you know."

The boy threw down the rope and, before Musashi knew what he was up to, knelt on the ground below the horse's head. Bowing deeply, he said, "I beg you, sir, make a samurai of me. That's what my father wanted, but there was no one we could ask for help."

Musashi dismounted, looked around for a moment, then picked up a stick and handed it to Sannosuke. He found another one for himself and said, "I want you to strike me with that stick. After I've seen how you handle it, I can decide whether you have the talent to be a samurai."

"If I hit you, will you say yes?"

"Try it and see." Musashi laughed.

Sannosuke took a firm grip on his weapon and rushed forward as if possessed. Musashi showed no mercy. Time and again the boy was struck—on the shoulders, in the face, on the arms. After each setback, he staggered away but always came back to the attack.

"Pretty soon he'll be in tears," thought Musashi.

But Sannosuke would not give up. When his stick broke in two, he charged empty-handed.

"What do you think you're doing, you runt?" Musashi snapped with deliberate meanness. He seized the boy by his obi and threw him flat on the ground.

"You big bastard!" shouted Sannosuke, already on his feet and attacking again.

Musashi caught him by the waist and held him up in the air. "Had enough?"

"No!" he shouted defiantly, though the sun was in his eyes and he was reduced to uselessly waving his arms and legs.

"I'm going to throw you against that rock over there. It'll kill you. Ready to give up?"

"No!"

"Stubborn, aren't you? Can't you see you're beaten?"

"Not as long as I'm alive I'm not! You'll see. I'll win in the end." "How do you expect to do that?"

"I'll practice, I'll discipline myself."

"But while you're practicing for ten years, I'll be doing the same thing." "Yes, but you're a lot older than I am. You'll die first."

"Hmm."

"And when they put you in a coffin, I'll strike the final blow and win!" "Fool!" shouted Musashi, tossing the boy to the ground.

When Sannosuke stood up, Musashi looked at his face for a moment, laughed and clapped his hands together once. "Good. You can be my pupil."

Like Teacher, Like Pupil

On the short journey back to the shack, Sannosuke rattled on and on about his dreams for the future.

But that night, when Musashi told him he should be ready to bid farewell to the only home he had ever known, he became wistful. They sat up late, and Sannosuke, misty-eyed and speaking in a soft voice, shared his memories of parents and grandparents.

In the morning, while they were preparing to move out, Musashi announced that henceforth he would call Sannosuke Iori. "If you're going to become a samurai," he explained, "it's only proper that you take your grandfather's name." The boy was not yet old enough for his coming-of-age ceremony, when he would normally have been given his adult name; Musashi thought taking his grandfather's name would give him something to live up to.

Later, when the boy seemed to be lingering inside the house, Musashi said quietly but firmly, "Iori, hurry up. There's nothing in there you need. You don't want reminders of the past."

Iori came flying out in a kimono barely covering his thighs, a groom's straw sandals on his feet and a cloth wrapper containing a box lunch of millet and rice in his hand. He looked like a little frog, but he was ready and eager for a new life.

"Pick a tree away from the house and tie the horse up," Musashi commanded.

"You may as well mount it now."

"Do as I say."

"Yes, sir."

Musashi noted the politeness; it was a small but encouraging sign of the boy's readiness to adopt the ways of the samurai in place of the slovenly speech of peasants.

Iori tied up the horse and came back to where Musashi was standing under the eaves of the old shack, gazing at the surrounding plain. "What's he waiting for?" wondered the boy.

Putting his hand on Iori's head, Musashi said, "This is where you were born and where you acquired your determination to win."

Iori nodded.

"Rather than serve a second lord, your grandfather withdrew from the warrior class. Your father, true to your grandfather's dying wish, contented himself with being a mere farmer. His death left you alone in the world, so the time has come for you to stand on your own feet."

"Yes, sir."

"You must become a great man!"

"I'll try." Tears sprang to his eyes.

"For three generations this house sheltered your family from wind and rain. Say your thanks to it, then say good-bye, once and for all, and have no regrets."

Musashi went inside and set fire to the hovel.

When he came out, Iori was blinking back his tears.

"If we left the house standing," said Musashi, "it'd only become a hideout for highwaymen or common thieves. I'm burning it to keep men like that from desecrating the memory of your father and grandfather."

"I'm grateful."

The shack turned into a small mountain of fire, then collapsed. "Let's go," said Iori, no longer concerned with relics of the past. "Not yet."

"There's nothing else to do here, is there?"

Musashi laughed. "We're going to build a new house on that knoll over there."

"New house? What for? You just burned the old one down."

"That belonged to your father and grandfather. The one we build will be for us."

"You mean we're going to stay here?"

"That's right."

"We're not going away somewhere and train and discipline ourselves?" "We'll do that here."

"What can we train ourselves for here?"

"To be swordsmen, to be samurai. We'll discipline our spirits and work hard to make ourselves into real human beings. Come with me, and bring that ax with you." He pointed to a clump of grass where he had put the farm tools.

Shouldering the ax, Iori followed Musashi to the knoll, where there were a few chestnut trees, pines and cryptomerias.

Musashi, stripping to the waist, took the ax and went to work. Soon he was sending up a veritable shower of white chips of raw wood.

Iori watched, thinking: "Maybe he's going to build a dōjō. Or are we going to practice out in the open?"

One tree fell, then another and another. Sweat poured down Musashi's ruddy cheeks, washing away the lethargy and loneliness of the past few days.

He had conceived of his present plan while standing by the farmer's fresh grave in the tiny burial ground. "I'll lay down my sword for a time," he had decided, "and work with a hoe instead." Zen, calligraphy, the art of tea, painting pictures and carving statues were all useful in perfecting one's swordsmanship. Couldn't tilling a field also contribute to his training? Wasn't this broad tract of earth, waiting for someone to bring it under cultivation, a perfect training hall? By changing inhospitable flatlands into farmlands, he would also be promoting the welfare of future generations.

He'd lived his whole life like a mendicant Zen priest—on the receiving end, so to speak, depending on other people for food, shelter and donations. He wanted to make a change, a radical one, since he'd long suspected that only those who had actually grown their own grain and vegetables really understood how sacred and valuable they were. Those who hadn't were like priests who did not practice what they preached or swordsmen who learned combat techniques but knew nothing of the Way.

As a boy, he had been taken by his mother into the fields and had worked alongside the tenants and villagers. His purpose now, however, was more than just to produce food for his daily meals; he sought nourishment for his soul. He wanted to learn what it meant to work for a living, rather than beg for one. He also wanted to implant his own way of thinking among the people of the district. As he saw it, by surrendering the land to weeds and thistles and giving in to storms and floods, they were passing on their hand-to-mouth existence from generation to generation without ever opening their eyes to their own potentialities and those of the land around them.

"Iori," he called, "get some rope and tie up this timber. Then drag it down to the riverbank."

When that was done, Musashi propped his ax against a tree and wiped the sweat off his forehead with his elbow. He then went down and stripped the bark off the trees with a hatchet. When darkness fell, they built a bonfire with the scraps and found blocks of wood to use as pillows.

"Interesting work, isn't it?" said Musashi.

With perfect honesty, Iori answered, "I don't think it's interesting at all. I didn't have to become your pupil to learn how to do this."

"You'll like it better as time goes on."

As autumn waned, the insect voices faded into silence. Leaves withered and fell. Musashi and Iori finished their cabin and addressed themselves to the task of making the land ready for planting.

One day while he was surveying the land, Musashi suddenly found himself thinking it was like a diagram of the social unrest that lasted for a century after the Ōnin War. Such thoughts aside, it was not an encouraging picture.

Unknown to Musashi, Hōtengahara had over the centuries been buried many times by volcanic ash from Mount Fuji, and the Tone River had repeatedly flooded the flatlands. When the weather was fair, the land became bone dry, but whenever there were heavy rains, the water carved out new channels, carrying great quantities of dirt and rock along with it. There was no principal stream into which the smaller ones flowed naturally, the nearest thing to this being a wide basin that lacked sufficient capacity to either water or drain the area as a whole. The most urgent need was obvious: to bring the water under control.

Still, the more he had looked, the more he had questioned why the area was undeveloped. "It won't be easy," he thought, excited by the challenge it posed. Joining water and earth to create productive fields was not much different from leading men and women in such a way that civilization might bloom. To Musashi it seemed that his goal was in complete agreement with his ideals of swordsmanship.

He had come to see the Way of the Sword in a new light. A year or two earlier, he had wanted only to conquer all rivals, but now the idea that the sword existed for the purpose of giving him power over other people was unsatisfying. To cut people down, to triumph over them, to display the limits of one's strength, seemed increasingly vain. He wanted to conquer himself, to make life itself submit to him, to cause people to live rather than die. The Way of the Sword should not be used merely for his own perfection. It should be a source of strength for governing people and leading them to peace and happiness.

He realized his grand ideals were no more than dreams, and would remain so as long as he lacked the political authority to implement them. But here in this wasteland, he needed neither rank nor power. He plunged into the struggle with joy and enthusiasm.

Day in and day out, stumps were uprooted, gravel sifted
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land leveled, soil and rocks made into dikes. Musashi and Iori worked from before dawn until after the stars were shining bright in the sky.

Their relentless toil attracted attention. Villagers passing by often stopped, stared, and commented.

"What do they think they're doing?"

"How can they live in a place like that?"

"Isn't the boy old San'emon's son?"

Everyone laughed, but not all let it go at that. One man came out of genuine kindness and said, "I hate to tell you this, but you're wasting your time. You can break your backs making a field here, but one storm and it'll be gone overnight."

When he saw they were still at it several days later, he seemed a bit offended. "All you're doing here, I tell you, is making a lot of water holes where they won't do any good."

A few days later he concluded that the strange samurai was short on brains. "Fools!" he shouted in disgust.

The next day brought a whole group to heckle.

"If anything could grow here, we wouldn't sweat under the blazing sun working our own fields, poor as they are. We'd sit home and play the flute." "And there wouldn't be any famines."

"You're digging up the place for nothing."

"Got the sense of a pile of manure."

Still hoeing, Musashi kept his eyes on the ground and grinned.

Iori was less complacent, though Musashi had earlier scolded him for taking

the peasants seriously. "Sir"—he pouted—"they all say the same thing." "Pay no attention."

"I can't help it," he cried, seizing a rock to throw at their tormentors.

An angry glare from Musashi stopped him. "Now, what good do you think that would do? If you don't behave yourself, I'm not going to have you as my pupil."

Iori's ears burned at the rebuke, but instead of dropping the rock, he cursed and hurled it at a boulder. The rock gave off sparks as it cracked in two. Iori tossed his hoe aside and began to weep.

Musashi ignored him, though he wasn't unmoved. "He's all alone, just as I am," he thought.

As though in sympathy with the boy's grief, a twilight breeze swept over the plain, setting everything astir. The sky darkened and raindrops fell.

"Come on, Iori, let's go in," called Musashi. "Looks like we're in for a squall." Hurriedly collecting his tools, he ran for the house. By the time he was inside, the rain was coming down in gray sheets.

"Iori," he shouted, surprised that the boy had not come with him. He went to the window and strained his eyes toward the field. Rain spattered from the sill into his face. A streak of lightning split the air and struck the earth. As he shut his eyes and put his hands over his ears, he felt the force of the thunder.

In the wind and rain, Musashi saw the cryptomeria tree at the Shippōji and heard the stern voice of Takuan. He felt that whatever he had gained since then he owed to them. He wanted to possess the tree's immense strength as well as Takuan's icy, unwavering compassion. If he could be to Iori what the old cryptomeria had been to him, he would feel he'd succeeded in repaying a part of his debt to the monk.

"Iori! ... Iori!"

There was no answer, only thunder and the rain pounding on the roof. "Where could he have gone?" he wondered, still unwilling to venture outside.

When the rain slackened to a drizzle, he did go out. Iori had not moved an inch. With his clothing clinging to his body and his face still screwed up in an angry frown, he looked rather like a scarecrow. How could a child be so stubborn?

"Idiot!" Musashi chided. "Get back into the house. Being drenched like that's not exactly good for you. Hurry up, before rivers start forming. Then you won't be able to get back."

Iori turned, as though trying to locate Musashi's voice, then started laughing. "Something bothering you? This kind of rain doesn't last. See, the clouds are breaking up already."

Musashi, not expecting to receive a lesson from his pupil, was more than a little put out, but Iori didn't give the matter a second thought. "Come on," the boy said, picking up his hoe. "We can still get quite a bit done before the sun's gone."

For the next five days, bulbuls and shrikes conversed hoarsely under a cloudless blue sky, and great cracks grew in the earth as it caked around the roots of the rushes. On the sixth day, a cluster of small black clouds appeared on the horizon and rapidly spread across the heavens until the whole plain seemed to be under an eclipse.

Iori studied the sky briefly and said in a worried tone, "This time it's the real thing." Even as he spoke, an inky wind swirled around them. Leaves shook and little birds dropped to the earth as if felled by a silent and invisible horde of hunters.

"Another shower?" Musashi asked.

"Not with the sky like that. I'd better go to the village. And you'd better gather up the tools and get inside as fast as you can." Before Musashi could ask why, Iori took off across the flatlands and was quickly lost in a sea of high grass.