Yasushi Inoue - The Samurai Banner of Furin Kazan

When he returned to Komuro, naturally he was exhausted, and he slept like a log in a small room in a temple where they had made camp.

Early the next morning Kansuke awakened. It was already fairly bright outside, and the morning light was beginning to stream into the room.

“There was a warning that the enemy’s patrols are advancing toward the camp from Un-no-Daira,” Kansuke heard a voice from the next room.

“What! The enemy’s patrols?”

“Yes, it is believed to be the Echigo troops.”

“How many?”

“There seems to be over 1,000.”

“All right.”

When Kansuke got up, his retainers were all assembled in full force. Their breath came out white on the cool November morning. Although it could be called a patrol, it was still an extremely large patrol. If they were advancing this way from Un-no-Daira, it was clear that they were willing to engage in battle.

“We shall retreat immediately,” said Kansuke. Kansuke had no intentions of injuring his retainers for nothing, or to be involved in a meaningless minor battle. Kansuke cleared his camp from Komuro, and they started on their way south. He believed that as long as his troops were retreating, the enemy would not chase them.

When they had marched about three miles, an arrow flew into the rear part of his army. Kansuke was quite upset about the tenacity of the enemy samurai. But he had no intention of responding to it.

They quickened their pace and continued south along the foot of the mountain. A post-horse appeared in the distance in front of him. The mounted samurai galloped right up to Kansuke, who was in the middle of his troops, and almost tumbled off the back of his horse. He said, haltingly, interrupting himself to gasp for breath, “Last night Princess Yuu passed away.”

It was a very unexpected message from Suwa, and Kansuke doubted the validity of what he had just heard.

“Say it again?!”

“Last night Princess Yuu…” He repeated the same sentence.

“Princess Yuu has passed away!? The princess!”

Kansuke nearly fell off of his own horse, which suddenly kicked its hind legs high with a violent neighing. An arrow struck the rump of his horse.

“The princess has passed away, the princess!”

Several arrows whizzed by around him.

Shouts were heard from afar.

“Retreat!” Kansuke sternly ordered his troops while his horse remained motionless. After a few seconds of deep thought, he dismounted and pulled the arrow from his horse’s rump. His retainers were retreating at full speed, quickly passing Kansuke by.

“Retreat, Retreat!” Kansuke kept yelling.

When he remounted his horse, unexpectedly he saw, from the other side of the hill, a group of the enemy numbering about ten or fifteen. They were closing in quickly and each of them had his sword drawn.

“This is absurd, the princess has not… no, it cannot be!” Kansuke could not think of Princess Yuu’s death as reality. Several arrows went by him. Shouts were rising from every direction. Kansuke dashed off to the west, and then suddenly he turned all the way around. The group of warriors was quickly closing in on him. He steered his horse in all directions uttering the same words repeatedly, “The princess, the princess!”

But suddenly, the realization struck him that the enemy’s samurai were rushing toward him from every direction, and for the first time he recognized clearly in what circumstances he found himself. Extreme hatred arose up in him. He threw himself flat onto his horse’s back, clasping his spear tightly. He was determined to fight his way out. He never thought of the danger to his life, nor was he afraid. He simply felt an extreme hatred toward the enemy’s samurai who were about to swarm around him.

He wanted to be alone as quickly as possible.

Once he had decided on the way out of his predicament, he turned the horse’s head toward his chosen direction with a determination that he was not going to allow any of the enemies to prevent his escape.

Some of Kansuke’s samurai must have returned, worrying about his life, since there were several who were locked in battle, their bright swords flashing in the early morning light.

Kansuke stabbed one enemy and kicked another. A spray of blood splashed onto his horse’s stomach. Taking that as a signal, Kansuke jumped over something black, something that he could not determine exactly what it was. It had a face like Ashura. 72

He kicked and scattered the enemy in front of him and found his way out. He directed his horse north. It dashed across the open field like an arrow, galloped up and down the hilly area of northern Shinano and kept heading northward.

“The princess!” When he shouted the same word again, which he had repeated hundreds of times, the horse neighed aloud and bent its front legs as it fell on its side to the ground. Kansuke was thrown off, rolled several times in the grass, and came to a stop at the root of a shrub.

The princess!

He sat up and looked around him. He searched for the messenger who had brought the news of Princess Yuu’s sudden death. There was no one to be seen anywhere. He saw no human figures in the vast field. Kansuke felt the feeble sun of midday in winter around him, but only the golden susuki, their ears sparkling with frost, felt it with him. There must have been no wind, as the flag-like ears were standing still.

Kansuke, for the first time, rolled the words out of his mouth, the words which he had heard from the messenger not long ago, “Last night the princess passed away.”

He had heard those words for sure. Princess Yuu had left this world. This meant that she had stopped breathing and her soul was gone. No, it is absurd, for such a beautiful and precious creature to have disappeared from this world.

No matter how hard he tried, Kansuke could not believe it.

Indeed, Princess Yuu’s body was so thin that he could have clasped her waist between his hands, and her large clear eyes were more radiant than a candle. All this made everyone who saw her think that she would not live very long. Even Kansuke himself felt that. But no, not that precious thing…

Kansuke stood up from among the dead weeds. The horse was unrideable. From afar, he could hear the sound of a conch shell that was ordering an assembly. It sounded like an allied conch shell.

All through that day, Kansuke walked north as if he were mad, rapidly some of the time and at other times slowly.

He passed several villages. Those villages seemed to be ghost towns. Not a single person was visible. The front doors were tightly shut. Except for the occasional bird, which flew by, each of the villages was as quiet as death. Each and every village was the same. Whenever Kansuke entered the village, he drank water from somebody’s well and kept walking, using his bloody spear as a cane.

Once, as he was passing through a village, he yelled out suddenly, “Princess!” It was a desperate cry of anguish. The stone tip of his spear sank about two inches into the dry dusty ground. Just at that time, inside the wall where Kansuke was standing, somebody shrieked. At the same time, Kansuke heard the footsteps of many people who were running away from him. It was not a ghost town. Not only this village but in all of the villages that he passed, people were hiding in their houses, the doors tightly shut, to avoid a confrontation with this ghastly looking old man who had a face like Ashura.

Without his even noticing, evening fell on the exhausted Kansuke. He was in a walnut grove. The blue light of the winter moon was scattered as he peered at it through the leaves of a huge walnut tree. “Princess!” Kansuke screamed. Suddenly several night birds flew away, flapping their wings.

Two days and two nights had passed, yet Kansuke continuously walked.