The Samurai's Daughter Read online

  About the Book

  In the brave new Japan of the 1870s, Taka and Nobu meet as children and fall in love; but their relationship will test the limits of society.

  Unified after a bitter civil war, Japan is rapidly turning into a modern country with rickshaws, railways and schools for girls. Commoners can marry their children into any class, and the old hatred between north and south is over – or so it seems.

  Taka is from the powerful southern Satsuma clan which now rules the country, and her father, General Kitaoka, is a leader of the new government. Nobu, however, is from the northern Aizu clan, massacred by the Satsuma in the civil war. Defeated and reduced to poverty, his family has sworn revenge on the Satsuma.

  Taka and Nobu’s love is unacceptable to both their families and must be kept secret, but what they cannot foresee is how quickly the tables will turn. Many southern samurai become disillusioned with the new regime, which has deprived them of their swords, status and honour. Taka’s father abruptly leaves Tokyo and returns to the southern island of Kyushu, where trouble is brewing.

  When he and his clansmen rise in rebellion, the government sends its newly-created army to put them down. Nobu and his brothers have joined this army, and his brothers now see their chance of revenge on the Satsuma. But Nobu will have to fight and maybe kill Taka’s father and brother, while Taka now has to make a terrible choice: between her family and the man she loves ...

  Based on the true story of the ‘last samurai’, The Samurai’s Daughter is a novel about a nation divided and a love that can never be.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Part I: The Black Peony

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part II: The Weaver Princess and the Cowherd

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part III: North and South

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part IV: No Turning Back

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part V: Across a Magpie Bridge

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Part VI: The Last Samurai

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Afterword

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Lesley Downer

  Copyright

  The Samurai’s Daughter

  Lesley Downer

  To Arthur

  Haru no yo no On a spring night

  Yume no ukihashi The floating bridge of dreams

  Todae shite Breaks off:

  Mine ni wakaruru Swirling round the mountaintop

  Yokogumo no sora A cloud drifts into the open sky

  Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241)

  The Gion Temple bells toll the impermanence of all things; the sala flowers beside the Buddha’s deathbed bear testimony to the fact that all who flourish must decline. The proud do not endure, they vanish like a spring night’s dream. The mighty fall at last like dust before the wind.

  The Tale of the Heike (compiled around 1371)

  PART I

  The Black Peony

  1

  Tenth month, year of the rooster, the sixth year of the Meiji era (November 1873)

  A SAVOURY AROMA seeped through the curtained doorway and around the window frames of the Black Peony, the most famous restaurant in the entire city of Tokyo. Taka gripped the rim of the rickshaw to stop herself shooting forward as it jolted to a halt and the boy dropped the shafts to the ground. She sat back in her seat, closed her eyes and took a long deep breath. The smell filled the air, akin to the tang of grilling eel but pungent, oilier, richer. Beef, roasting beef: the smell of the new age, of civilization, of enlightenment. And she, Taka Kitaoka, at the very grown-up age of thirteen, was about to have her first taste.

  Fujino, her mother, had already clambered down from the rickshaw in front and disappeared through the doorway with a shiver of her voluminous dove-grey skirts. Aunt Kiharu bobbed behind her, tiny and elegant in a kimono and square-cut haori jacket, like a little ship after a huge one, followed by Taka’s sister, Haru, in a pale yellow princess-line dress, her hair in a glossy chignon.

  Taka too was in a western-style dress. It was the first time she’d ever worn one and she felt proud and self-conscious and a little nervous. It was a rose-pink day dress with a nipped-in waist and the hint of a bustle, brand new and of soft silk, specially commissioned from a tailor in Yokohama. She’d told Okatsu, her maid, to pull her corset so tight she could hardly breathe, and had put on a jacket and gloves and a matching bonnet. She lifted her skirts carefully as she went through the vestibule, past rows of boots smelling of leather and polish.

  Inside the Black Peony it was hot and steamy and full of extraordinary smells and sounds. Smoke from the cooking meat mingled with the fug of tobacco that blanketed the room. Above the hubbub of voices and laughter, slurps and the smacking of lips, there were hoarse shouts of ‘Over here! Another plate of your fine beef!’ ‘The fire’s going out. Bring more charcoal, quick!’ ‘Another flask of sake!’ As a well-brought-up young lady, Taka knew she was supposed to keep her eyes modestly fixed on her mother’s skirts, but she couldn’t help it. She simply had to look around.

  The room was crammed with men, big and small, old and young, sitting cross-legged around square tables, each with a charcoal brazier sunk in the centre, dipping their chopsticks into cast iron pans in which something meaty sizzled and bubbled as if it were alive, changing hue from red to brown. They were dressed in the most extraordinary fashions, some like traditional gentlemen in loose robes and obis, others in high-collared shirts with enormous gold timepieces dangling from their breast pockets and with stiff-brimmed hats and furled black bat-wing umbrellas laid on the floor beside them. Sheets of paper were pinned along the walls with words brushed in the angular katakana script which marked them as foreign: miruku, cheezu, bata – ‘milk’, ‘cheese’, ‘butter’ – words that anyone with any hope of being seen as modern had at least to pretend to be acquainted with.

  Taka had never before been in such an exotic place or seen such an assortment of terrifyingly fashionable people. She gazed around in wonder then flushed and quickly dropped her eyes when she realized that the men were staring back.

  ‘Otaka!’ her mother called, using the polite form of Taka’s name.

  Picking up her skirts, Taka raced after her down the hallway and into an inner room. It was filled with heavy wooden furniture that cast long shadows in the flickering light of candles and oil lamps. Maids slid the door closed behind her but she could still hear the raucous shouts and laughter. She settled herself on a chair, smoothing the swathes of fabric, trying not to reveal how awkward she felt with her legs dangling instead of folded under her in the usual way. Her mother had spread herself over three chairs to support all the ruff
les and layers of her tea dress. Maids fanned the charcoal in the braziers then carried in plates of dark red, shiny meat and laid slices on the hot iron griddle. As the smell of burning flesh filled the air, Taka wrinkled her nose in dismay.

  ‘I don’t think I can eat this,’ she whispered to Haru.

  ‘You know what Mr Fukuzawa says.’

  Taka looked admiringly at her sister’s gleaming chignon, envying the way she was so perfect and never had a hair out of place. Two years older than Taka, Haru seemed grown up already. She was always smiling and serene, ready to accept whatever came her way. She picked up her chopsticks and leaned forward.

  ‘We have to eat meat to nourish our bodies if we’re to be tall and strong, like westerners.’

  ‘But it smells so … so peculiar. Will I still be able to pray to Buddha and the gods if I eat it? Won’t it make me smell like a westerner? You’ll be able to smell it wherever I go.’

  ‘Just listen to you girls,’ trilled Aunt Kiharu, putting her dainty fingers to her chin and tilting her small head. ‘Haven’t you read Cross-legged round the Stew Pot?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Fujino primly. ‘They don’t read such nonsense. They’re well-brought-up young ladies. They go to school. They know far more already than you or I ever will. History, science, how the earth began, how to talk properly and add up figures …’

  ‘Ah, but, my dear Fujino, I wonder if they’re acquainted with the important things – how to please a man and entertain him and make sure he never leaves your side!’

  Fujino folded her fan and tapped her smartly on the arm, clucking in mock disapproval. ‘Really, Kiharu-sama. Give them time.’

  Aunt Kiharu was Taka’s mother’s closest friend. They had been geishas together in Kyoto and Taka had known her ever since she was a little girl. Now she tipped her head coquettishly and gave a knowing smile, then pursed her lips and recited in a high-pitched lilt:

  ‘Samurai, farmer; artisan or trader;

  oldster, youngster; boy or girl;

  clever or stupid, poor or elite,

  you won’t get civilized if you don’t eat meat!

  Meat for the winter months – milk, cheese and butter, too;

  Scrotum of bull will make a man out of you!’

  Fujino hooted with laughter. She dipped her chopsticks into the simmering pan, lifted out a slice of greying meat and placed it neatly in Taka’s bowl. ‘We don’t want to turn you into a man, but we certainly want you to be civilized!’

  Taka chewed the morsel thoughtfully, turning it round and round in her mouth. It was stringy and there was something rather nauseating about the taste but she would have to get used to it if she was to be a modern woman. She thought of the rickshaw boy waiting outside, smoking his pipe, and the grooms squatting in the antechamber. It was a shame they would never have the chance to be civilized, but that was just the way it had to be.

  That year Taka’s body had changed more than she could ever have imagined possible. She’d grown long and slender like a young bamboo, she’d seen breasts swelling under her kimonos, she’d had her first bleed – she’d become a woman. If she’d stayed in the ancient capital, Kyoto, where she was born, she’d be finishing her geisha training by now and preparing for her ritual deflowering. But instead here she was in the bustling city of Tokyo, learning to be a modern woman.

  For the world was changing even faster than she was. She’d spent the first years of her life in the geisha district of Gion in the heart of Kyoto, in a dark wooden house with bamboo blinds that flapped and creaked in the breeze and a flimsy door that wobbled and stuck in its grooves. Her mother was a famous geisha there. When she strolled the narrow alleys of the district, the passers-by inclined their heads and sang out, ‘Good morning, Fujino-sama, how are you today?’ in high-pitched geisha lilts.

  In the daytime the plaintive twang of the shamisen echoed through the house as Fujino practised the performing arts that were her trade, for geishas, as everyone knew, were entertainers, artistes; the two characters gei and sha mean ‘arts’ and ‘person’. In the evening she and her fellow geishas appeared at parties. They served food, topped up sake cups, performed classical dances and songs, teased, told jokes and stories and played games. Some of their customers were merchants, old and jowly, others young and handsome samurai. But whoever they were, if they had worries the geishas were ready to lend a sympathetic ear. They were the men’s best friends and some were also their lovers.

  From when she was a little girl Taka helped out at geisha parties, absorbing the geisha ways, running around with trays of drinks and listening to the geishas’ witty chat, learning to speak their special dialect with a coy Kyoto lilt. Her mother and Haru taught her to warble geisha songs and dance prettily and play the shamisen. Her older brother, Ryutaro, had been sent to live with their father and learn how to fight. He had been killed in battle, so long ago that she barely remembered him. But the younger, Eijiro, stayed with the family and was always around the house, tormenting her.

  Ever since she could remember the streets had been full of samurai, milling about, brawling. There were regular clashes between men of the southern clans who were determined to depose the shogun and his government and the northerners who formed the shogun’s police force and supported him. When she was very small, samurai of the southern Choshu clan had set fire to the imperial palace, where the emperor lived. One of her earliest memories was of standing in the street, gazing in excitement, while smoke billowed and people ran about in panic, afraid that the fire would spread through the wooden city.

  More than once the shogun’s police had come hammering at the door, demanding to see her father. She’d be bundled off to the back of the house and would watch open-mouthed, her heart pounding, through the crack in the sliding paper doors while her mother barred their way, swearing he wasn’t there, though Taka knew perfectly well he was.

  She’d always known that her mother and her geisha friends loved the men of the southern clans and that the shogun’s police and the northerners were the hated enemy. Every night southern samurai congregated in the teahouses to discuss and plot or just talk and laugh. Her mother played the gracious hostess while they drank and argued, keeping an eye out in case the shogun’s police suddenly appeared. And of all the gallant, brilliant samurai, the most gallant and brilliant of all was her father. People addressed him as ‘General Kitaoka’. Big and bluff and rather serious, he presided over the gatherings. He’d sit quietly, then start to speak and the others would fall silent and listen. Taka felt proud to be the daughter of such a man.

  He was often away. Sometimes she would find her mother weeping and guess that he was at war and that she was afraid for him.

  When Taka was eight there was a huge battle right outside the city. She could hear the boom of cannons and smell the smoke that drifted across like a cloud.

  Then there was rejoicing. The southerners had won. A few months later the shogun was overthrown. His capital, Edo, was taken and Edo Castle, where he had lived, handed over to the southerners, who were to form a new government in the name of the young emperor. Her father was one of the leaders. A few months later news came that the emperor would leave Kyoto and move to Edo.

  Taka and her family had to move too, to join her father, and suddenly her life turned upside down. She’d never left the geisha district before, let alone been out of the city, certainly never travelled in a palanquin. Now she spent twenty days on her knees in a cushioned box jolting along the Eastern Sea Road. When she peeped out of the small window or stepped out to stretch her legs, all she could see was an endless line of people and palanquins escorted by attendants and guards and porters and horses laden with baggage. She crossed forests and mountains and saw the sparkling waters of the ocean for the first time.

  Edo, their new home, was the biggest, richest, most exciting city in the world. Not long before, it had been a place of daimyo palaces and samurai residences, of narrow streets crammed with artisans and merchants, depicted in innumera
ble woodblock prints. With the emperor here, it became even more exciting. It was declared the new capital and given a new name: To-kyo, ‘the Eastern Capital’. Kyoto had been just ‘the Capital’.

  Even now Tokyo was barely five years old. It was a young city, bursting with noise and energy, where people hurried about, gazing at the extraordinary new buildings rising around them. When Taka first arrived, the Ginza, where the Black Peony was, had been a nondescript neighbourhood of shabby wooden shops selling chests or cabinets or fabric. The previous year there had been a huge fire and the district had completely burnt down. Now it had risen again. It was a magical place lined with splendid brick and stone buildings, with colonnades and balconies where men in Inverness capes and ladies in voluminous western dresses gazed at the rickshaws and horse-drawn omnibuses careering by, as if the whole world had suddenly come to life.

  People said, and perhaps it was true, that for the first time ever they felt they could change their destinies. Under the rule of the shoguns, everyone’s clothing and hairstyle had been decreed by law. A man of the samurai class had to dress as a samurai, a man of the merchant class as a merchant. But now, if they had the money, anyone could don the costume of the new age, and no one would have any idea what class they had once belonged to. The new government positively encouraged it. If people wanted to be really modern, all they had to do was eat a little meat.

  And now there were westerners walking the streets. Taka’s mother had told her how when she, Fujino, was a child, before Taka was born, Black Ships had steamed into Edo Bay, bringing pale-faced barbarians with grotesque features and huge noses and terrifying weaponry. Now they were everywhere, installing western-style buildings and lighthouses and telegraphs, though people still stared wherever they went.

  Taka often saw them on the streets. There was even a barbarian who came and taught her English. They looked very strange, barely human, in fact, but she knew they were to be admired, for they held the key to civilization and enlightenment. The government encouraged men at least to dress western style, eat meat as the barbarians did and learn western languages so that Japan could join the outside world and be the equal of the western nations. Fewer women took up the new fashions but geishas had always been trendsetters and Taka’s mother in particular was always ahead of the times.