Kaze snapped himself to attention. He did so not because he had heard a sound but because he realized he was in a state of reverie where he would miss a small sound, if there was one to hear. Not hearing such a sound could cost him his life. He was not afraid to die, but he wanted his death to have meaning, and being killed because you dropped your guard while listening to flute music was not a meaningful death. Kaze drew his sword closer to him and thought of the death of Takeda Shingen.
While besieging Noda Castle, owned by Ieyasu’s clan, Shingen heard that a flute player played each night from the castle walls. While he played, both sides stopped fighting and listened to the plaintive melodies. Shingen decided to hear this music and had a place set up for him near the castle walls, behind a reed screen. A musketeer saw the preparations and made preparations of his own.
The musketeer set up his gun so he could shoot at the reed enclosure, even in the dark of night. He waited until the flute player was in the midst of his concert and fired one bullet into the enclosure. By luck, he struck Shingen himself, although at the time the musketeer didn’t know it. Mortally wounded, the wily Shingen gave orders to keep news of his death hidden for three years.
Now Kaze was accused of trying to kill Ieyasu in a similar manner, with a musket. Kaze was almost insulted that they thought he used a musket. Any peasant could be trained to point a musket in the direction of the enemy and fire.
The muskets were the “gift” of the hairy barbarians from Europe, and Kaze wished they were banned from warfare in Japan. A peasant armed with a musket could kill a superbly trained samurai, turning the value of years of samurai training and swordwork upside down. Kaze’s own training had been intense, especially during the formative years when he studied under the Sensei, his teacher.
Almost all Japanese art was taught by a master to a pupil, from painting to dancing to fencing. Over and over again, Kaze was drilled in the physical actions that somehow turned into mental and spiritual lessons. Over and over again.
The pattern of attack and defense was repeated endlessly. The purpose was to teach Kaze proper kata, or form, and Kaze’s Sensei seemed to have an inexhaustible fund of patience as he persistently practiced the same moves. First Kaze attacked the Sensei using the same precise sequence of moves; then Kaze was in turn attacked by the Sensei, repeating the exact moves Kaze made. As Kaze increased his mastery of the sequence of attack and defense, the Sensei drastically increased the speed, dancing their repetitive ballet at ever higher levels.
Once, when he was ten, Kaze was frustrated by the endless practice, and he dared to swing his sword with anger. Another would not have detected the emotions behind Kaze’s sword cuts, but the Sensei immediately stopped the practice. He glared at Kaze and said, “Baka! Fool!”
The Sensei never swore, but he made the word “fool” sound as scornful and withering as any torrent from a drunken samurai. Kaze’s face burned red, and he hung his head in shame. It was the Japanese way for the novice to learn from the master, but it was also the Japanese way for the novice to accept the pace of teaching set by the master, and never show frustration.
“I’ll teach you the most important thing you can learn in a fight,” the Sensei said. “Until you defeat yourself, you cannot defeat others. If you fight from anger, frustration, or pride, you cannot win. You must fight from nothingness, letting the sword seek its own path. If you let your emotions rule you in a fight, even if you overcome your enemy, you have not won. Can you understand that?”
“I think so, Sensei.”
“As you get older, you’ll have more cause for rage. It’s a sad part of life that the passage of time is the accumulation of pain. When that happens, you’ll not only understand this lesson better, you’ll have more need of it.”
Kaze had taken that lesson to heart, and had never again vented his emotions through his sword.
This particular practice was an especially long and tedious one. Finally, convinced that Kaze had learned as much as he was going to that day, the Sensei stopped. Gratefully, Kaze sat on a log at the edge of the meadow they were practicing in and he reached for a jug of water. “Mizu, Sensei?” Kaze asked.
The old man, who seemed hardly winded, gave a negative nod of his head. Kaze uncorked the jug and poured the water down his throat. The water was cold and sweet, as refreshing as water taken directly from a mountain stream. The Sensei was six times older than Kaze, but Kaze had stopped being embarrassed that the old man seemed to have resources of stamina that far exceeded his own. The wellspring of the Sensei’s strength was his spirit, not his body, and Kaze knew he had a considerable amount of growth before his spirit could even approach his teacher’s.
“Can you tell me something, Sensei?” Kaze asked after he had caught his breath.
The Sensei nodded his head slightly. Kaze knew this was his signal to continue.
“I practice each pattern until I learn it precisely. If I meet someone in a duel who recognizes what pattern I’m using, won’t it give them an advantage to know my next move?”
“Yes.”
After a silence, Kaze dared ask for more elucidation. “Then why do I practice the patterns so precisely?”
“So you can learn to be creative in your fencing.”
Kaze pondered that, and at the risk of being called stupid by the Sensei, he asked, “But won’t the precise repetition of patterns kill any creativity I have?”
“Then whatever creativity is inside you deserves to die. You practice patterns to learn technique. That technique is necessary to allow the freedom to create. You cannot project power without a sound base, and you cannot show creativity without a mastery of basic technique. When you have mastered that technique, you can transcend it and combine the basic moves of sword fighting into marvelous new combinations. But first you have to be so grounded in basic technique that you no longer have to think of it. That is what makes a master fencer.”
“When do you think I’ll master technique?”
“Never.”
Kaze sighed. Dealing with the Sensei was sometimes like talking to a Zen priest. Seeing the frustrated look on the boy’s face, the Sensei said, “Why do you think I say that?”
Kaze thought for several minutes, then finally said, “Because you are constantly practicing, despite your years with the sword. When you spar with me, you are not only teaching me, you are also reviewing all the basic subtleties of the patterns. You are correcting me, and at the same time reminding yourself. You always say that no man can achieve perfection, he can only strive for it. If that’s true, then the striving must continue forever, because our goal is to achieve perfection of mind, spirit, body, and sword.”
“Good.”
The flute music stopped. Kaze looked up at the lattice opening, hoping that the music would start again, despite its melancholy theme. But silence filled the night air, and Kaze eventually realized that the music for the night was finished. He sighed and drew the robe closer around his shoulders. Just before drifting off, he wondered if the choice of a musket as the assassination weapon had any significance. Unlike Shingen, Ieyasu had been lucky, and the bullet had missed him and hit Nakamura. Kaze wondered if the conditions of the assassination had promoted that luck.
CHAPTER 12
Gray hair does not mean