Laura Rowland: Shinjū

Edo Jail was a place of death and defilement to which no one ever went voluntarily. Sano had never seen it before and wouldn’t have come now, except he knew that the bodies of Noriyoshi and Yukiko had been taken to the morgue there. Now he surveyed the jail with mingled curiosity and unease.

The Tokugawa prison sprawled along a narrow canal that formed a moat before its entrance. Guard towers perched at each corner of the high stone walls that rose straight up out of the stagnant water. Dark liquid of an unidentified and probably unspeakable nature trickled from holes at the base of the walls down to the canal. Above the walls, gabled roofs protruded. Signs of neglect gave mute testimony to the city’s repugnance toward the jail and its inhabitants: weeds and moss growing between the stones, missing roof tiles, and peeling plaster. A rickety wooden bridge spanned the canal, ending at the guardhouse and the portals of a massive, iron-banded wooden gate. All around the jail lay the miserable shacks and drab, winding streets of Kodemma-cho. Located near the river in the northeast sector of Nihonbashi, Kodemma-cho provided an ideal site for the jail-as far from the castle and the administrative district as convenience would allow.

Sano was thankful for the shrill shouts of the ragged children playing in the streets, and for the greasy smell of food frying in backyard kitchens. They masked whatever sounds and smells emanated from the jail. A tremor ran down his spine as he remembered the stories he’d heard about what went on there. Taking a deep breath, he urged his horse onto the bridge.

A commotion began in the guardhouse as Sano arrived. When he dismounted and secured his horse to a post, the three guards nearly fell over one another trying to get out the door. He saw them exchange confused glances. Then they bowed low.

“We are at your service, master,” the guards chorused.

Sano took in their unkempt appearance and cropped hair, the much-repaired leather armor and leggings, the single long sword that each wore. These were commoners-probably former smalltime criminals-permitted to bear arms in order that samurai would not have to serve in such a degrading capacity.

“I am Yoriki Sano Ichirō,” he said. “I wish to interview the men who handled the bodies of the double-suicide victims this morning.

The guards gaped at him. They’d probably never had a yoriki visitor before, Sano thought, let alone received such an unusual request from one; he was sure that his colleagues never set foot here. One of the guards let out a nervous titter. The large man next to him, presumably the leader, backhanded him a sharp blow.

“What are you waiting for?” he growled. “Take him to the warden at once!”

The guard slid back the thick wooden beams that barred the gate. Sano entered the jail compound, prepared for the worst.

His first impression of the compound was reassuring. In a simple courtyard of packed earth, five more guards patrolled. The odor of urine hung in the air, but no worse than near the backstreet privies of Edo. Thirty paces beyond rose a dingy wooden building with heavy bars over the windows. Entering through its plank door, he could see past the entryway to a room that might have been an office in the administrative district, except for the shabby appearance of the furnishings and workers. The guard led him down the outer corridor and knocked on a door.

“Enter!”

Bowing to someone within, the guard said, “Honorable Warden, I bring you a distinguished visitor.” He moved over to let Sano inside.

The warden, a stout man at a desk piled with papers, greeted Sano’s request with a look of bewilderment. Then he shrugged and said to the guard, “Bring the eta.” He turned to Sano apologetically. “I must ask you to see them outside, yoriki . They aren’t allowed in this building.”

“Of course.”

Sano followed the guard back out to the courtyard, pondering this bit of jail protocol. The eta were society’s outcasts. Their hereditary link with such death-related occupations as butchering and leather tanning rendered them spiritually unclean. Consequently, other classes shunned them. They lived apart from the rest of the population in slums on the outskirts of town. They couldn’t marry outside their class, or otherwise escape from it. They performed the dirtiest and most menial of tasks: emptying cesspools, collecting garbage, clearing away bodies after floods, tires, and earthquakes-and staffing the jail and morgue. Sano had known that the eta acted as corpse handlers here. But he hadn’t realized that even within the jail, certain areas were off limits to them.

“Please wait here, sir.” The guard disappeared around the corner of the building. Presently he returned with three men, all wearing identical short, unbleached muslin kimonos.

Two were still in their teens, the other a man of about fifty. Eyes wary, like those of trapped animals, they immediately dropped to their knees before him, foreheads touching the ground, arms extended. The two young ones were trembling, and Sano understood why: a samurai could kill them on a whim-to test a new sword, if he so desired-without fear of reprisal. But he had also heard horrifying stories about the suffering inflicted upon prisoners by eta jailers, torturers, and executioners. Now he addressed them with a mixture of pity and revulsion.

“You handled the bodies from the shinjū this morning,” he said. “Is that right?”

Silence. Then the older man said, “Yes, master.” The others echoed him, faintly.

“Did you see any signs that they were not suicides? Any wounds? Bruises?”

“No, master,” the older man said. The others, trembling violently now, didn’t answer.

“Don’t be afraid. Think. Tell me what the bodies looked like.”

“I’m sorry, master, I don’t know.”

After several more attempts, Sano realized that he would get no useful information from these frightened, inarticulate men. “You may go now,” he said, disappointed.

The two younger men hastily backed away, still kneeling, then rose and took off at a run. But the older one didn’t move.

“Honorable master, I beg permission to try to help you,” he said.

Sano’s hope stirred. “Stand,” he ordered, wanting a better look at this eta who had the courage to assert himself. “What is it you want to tell me?”

The eta stood. He had gray hair, intelligent eyes set deeply in a square, stern face, and a dignified bearing.

“I can say nothing myself, master,” he said, looking Sano straight in the eye. “But I can take you to someone who knows all there is to know.”

Intrigued, Sano said, “Very well.”

He followed the eta along the same path the guard had taken, around the building then through another courtyard. There he saw a huge building of unpainted plaster, set on a high stone foundation: the jail proper. Tiny windows far above the ground gave it the look of a fortress. Five more guards let them through a door even thicker and more heavily reinforced than the main gate.

Noise and odor simultaneously attacked Sano’s senses. Moans and sobs issued from behind the solid doors that lined the passage. A pair of jailers pushed past Sano. One banged loudly on each door, adding to the din.

“We’re watching you, you stinking sons of whores!” he shouted. “Behave yourselves!”

The other shoved trays into each cell through slots at the bottoms of the doors. In the weak daylight that shone through the windows at either end of the passage, Sano saw that the rations were rotten vegetables and moldy rice. Flies buzzed thickly, alighting on his face and hands. Furiously he brushed them away. A powerful stench of urine, feces, and vomit filled his nostrils; he tried not to breathe. Rivulets of filthy water ran out of the cells and onto the stone floor. Sano gasped as a huge rat scurried across his path. Quickly the eta led him around a corner and down another passage. Here the noise diminished, although the smell didn’t. Sano began to relax, when suddenly a door flew open. Two jailers hurried toward him, dragging between them a naked, un-conscious man. Blood poured from the man’s nose; fresh cuts covered his torso. The jailers opened a cell and threw the man inside. As Sano passed, he caught a glimpse of five emaciated men lying in a pool of filth in the cramped space. He looked away, horrified. Could anyone possibly deserve such treatment? Couldn’t the government control its subjects some other way than by torturing and starving those who broke the law? That most sentences were short seemed a dubious blessing: many prisoners were executed after their trials. That the government he served would do such things frightened him. He tried not to think of it.