Dale Furutani - Death at the Crossroads

“Are you ready to die?”

The young samurai ’s face was a mask of anger, and spittle flew from his mouth as he issued his challenge. Three of the other four passengers in the tiny boat hugged the gunwales, bent back by the young swordsman’s words. The fourth, the object of the samurai’s fury, sat calmly at the back of the boat, near the oarsman, who had stopped rowing as the confrontation started to escalate.

“Well? Why won’t you answer? I am a student of the Yagyu school of swordsmanship, and I have challenged you!”

The muscular man in the back of the boat took the time to wipe a bit of spit that had landed on the back of his hand with the sleeve of his kimono before answering. His other hand held a single katana , a samurai’s sword, in a plain black scabbard. He was clearly a samurai, but his head wasn’t shaved in samurai fashion, and he had the appearance of a ronin , a masterless samurai who wandered about looking for employment.

A few moments before, a group of five had gathered by the river-bank to be ferried across the stream: two samurai, two peasants, and a merchant, all thrown together by their common need to cross the river. Instead of politely introducing himself to the older samurai, the youth had immediately started talking about his training in the Yagyu style of fencing and his prowess with the sword. At first the peasants and merchant had found the talk entertaining, because skill with a sword was valued above all else in a warrior culture. But soon after embarking on the voyage across the river, the youth had become increasingly boastful of his swordsmanship, asking the other samurai to confirm that the Yagyu school of fencing was the greatest in the land. When the middle-aged samurai remained silent, the youth had become agitated, taking the older man’s silence as a judgment on both his school and his own skill as a swordsman. Standing in the bow of the flat-bottomed boat, the young samurai faced the older man, his hand on the hilt of one of the two swords stuck in his sash.

“Why don’t you answer? Are you ready to die?” the young man screamed.

The other warrior looked at the aggressive samurai thoughtfully, his thick black eyebrows furrowing together into a V. He said, “A true samurai is always ready to die. But I am from a quite different school of fencing. Like Tsukahara Bokuden, I am from the ‘No Sword’ school of fencing, and I am quite certain a man of your character can be defeated by it.”

“No Sword?” the young man repeated. “That’s ridiculous! How can a samurai fight with no sword? Now you have pushed me beyond tolerance! I demand that this impudent insult be cleansed with blood. I challenge you to a duel.”

“All right,” said the older man. He pointed to a small island in the middle of the stream. “Boatman, stop there. It’s a good place for a duel.”

Nodding, but with fear on his face, the boatman sculled the boat toward the island. He stood at the end of the boat, both propelling and steering it with a single, two-piece oar that trailed the boat like the tail on a fish. When the boat hit the shore, the young man leaped out of the boat and landed on the sandy shore of the island. He immediately drew his katana, ran a few feet onto the island, and took an aggressive stance, with both hands on the hilt and the blade in the “aimed at the eye” position.

“Come on!” he shouted to the samurai in the boat. “Let’s see if this ridiculous No Sword school of fencing can defeat one who has studied with the Yagyu!”

The other man calmly stood up and handed his sword to the boatman. “Here, hold this,” he said. “For this duel I truly need no sword.”

The boatman clumsily reached out for the sword, releasing his grip on the oar as he did so. Before the oar could clatter to the bottom of the boat, the samurai caught it, lifted it out of the guides in the back of the boat that held it in place when it was used for steering and propulsion, and used it to push the boat away from the island.

“What are you doing!” the youth screamed.

“I am defeating you with the No Sword school of fencing. If you had truly studied with the Yagyu, you would know that fencing is more than just killing people; it is developing all your faculties, including your mind. Now, because of your stupidity and without using my sword, I can continue my journey and also eliminate the impediment of a troublesome character.”

The boat was away from the island and moving with the current before the young samurai could get back to the shore. “I think a cold swim will be excellent training for you,” the older man shouted as the youth started running along the shore. “Just as a bucket of cold water will dampen the ardor of amorous dogs, a dose of cold water will also be good for a young man too full of himself for his own good and the good of others.”

The swiftly flowing stream drew the boat away from the island at an increasing pace and, before the young man reached the final spit of land on the tiny island, the boat was much too far away to catch. Too angry to speak, the young man jumped about in rage in ankle-deep water, waving his sword and watching the boat draw away from him. He heard the sound that all samurai, caught up in their importance and honor, dreaded: The occupants of the boat were laughing at him.

Jiro the charcoal seller had many things on his mind, but death was not one of them. He was late, and his regular customers would scold him if they had to use branches and twigs in their hibachi instead of charcoal to heat water for their morning tea. Worse yet, if the Lord’s household needed charcoal, Jiro would be beaten if he wasn’t there to provide it. The Lord was neither patient nor understanding. Several villagers had felt the cudgels of the Lord’s men, and Jiro was not anxious to join their number.

Around him, mist clung tenaciously to the jagged folds that formed the ravines and valleys of the mountains. Through the low-lying white haze, the ragged black pines and reddish cryptomeria poked through the white curtain, looking like some enigmatic calligraphy of the gods, a message written with the slashing brush strokes of trunks and branches on a shifting silver paper.

The sun had been in the sky for half an hour, but its beams had not yet penetrated to the bottom of the steep-sided valley. In the blue gloom of this extended dawn, Jiro padded along a narrow trail, finding his way by habit and instinct as much as by sight.

Hung on his back was an enormous woven basket filled with charcoal. The basket was draped from his shoulders by twisted ropes made of summer grass and padded with torn-up rags. A line reached from the basket to a headband to help stabilize the load and to bear some of the weight. Jiro was naked except for a homespun loincloth, but despite the chill of the mountains and the morning, he was sweating from his steady run with a heavy load.

Pad, pad, pad … His naked feet, encrusted with an armor of horny calluses built over a fifty-year life span, slapped against the dirt of the trail, forming a gentle rhythm that complemented Jiro’s rolling gait. He used the oscillation of the weighty basket to help him down the path, shifting the weight first to one side, then the other, calling on his long years of experience to work with the pendulum forces of momentum instead of fighting them. This was a metaphor for how Jiro dealt with life. Every Japanese child was given the example of how the flexible bamboo could survive a storm that would snap a rigid tree, and they were admonished to follow this example.