For almost three years, Kaze had searched for the daughter of his former Lord and Lady. The child would be nine years old now, and Kaze knew that she had been sent from Kamakura to Edo. Kaze even knew where she had been sent. Edo Yukaku Kobanaya, “Little Flower Whorehouse Edo.”
The implications of her destination were not lost on Kaze. Prostitutes were usually initiated into their trade at fourteen or fifteen. Marriages were sometimes arranged at this age, and a girl was considered a woman. Perhaps at nine the child he was looking for would be used as a servant in the house, helping with the cleaning and cooking until she could be initiated into the house’s business. But Kaze also knew there were men, unnatural men, who took pleasure in despoiling children. From the name of the house, Kaze was afraid the Little Flower Whorehouse would be a place that catered to such appetites.
Knowing the place he was looking for and finding it were two different things. Edo was a large city, with new streets and businesses appearing daily. There was no directory of the city. Perhaps the guard captains in each district would know the businesses in their section, but, as a wanted man, Kaze could not go to them. Instead, he had taken a disguise that would allow him to wander any street in the city, so he could visit each district and find out if any resident knew of the Little Flower Whorehouse.
His choice of what kind of entertainment to provide was easy. He had played with tops as a boy, and it was no great trick to combine a few tops with his skill at handling a sword. Thus he became a street entertainer, with sword and tops tucked into a deep hemp bag that he carried over his shoulder.
Edo was full of entertainers. They filled every busy thoroughfare and also wandered the side streets. They did juggling, puppet shows for children, acrobatics, or spun tales and stories. Even in the part of the city occupied by the great nobles near the new castle of Edo, street entertainers could be found plying their trade to the servants and household workers of the great Lords.
His particular choice also had an added advantage. He could carry a sword as part of his paraphernalia, but not reveal he was a samurai. As a wanted man, the authorities were looking for him in the guise of a samurai. In Edo he was in the heart of his enemy’s stronghold, so he had to be as discreet as possible. To a samurai, all heimin, commoners, were to some extent invisible, so Kaze wanted to be mistaken for a heimin.
Kaze had even cultivated a normal walk, instead of a samurai’s walk, as part of his disguise. As a samurai, he strode down the street, almost marching. As an expert swordsman, Kaze’s normal walk also had an additional element, which was a peculiar ability to maintain his center of gravity and balance at all times, instantly ready to move to the attack or defense if unexpectedly assaulted. Kaze knew that he could look up a street and instantly tell which samurai had been vigorously trained in the sword and which had not, just by their walk. Kaze didn’t want to have his own walk make it easy for the authorities to spot that he was a samurai.
He was glad that he had successfully evaded capture in the capital city of his enemies. Although he was on a general list of men wanted by the Tokugawas after the battle of Sekigahara, he was happy with the thought that the Tokugawa authorities did not know he was in Edo and that they were not specifically looking for him.
Kaze made his way to the house that had his tiny room. Edo was in the midst of an acute housing shortage, and lodgings were at a premium. Even the daimyo, who were used to being offered accommodations in private houses or large temples, often found themselves squeezed out of their lodgings as higher-ranking daimyo appeared in the capital. The more ambitious daimyo, like Yoshida and Okubo, had received tracts of land from Ieyasu and they were already building large mansions in Edo.
The common people, as they always did, made do with the best they could after the samurai and nobles took what they wanted.
The housing shortage affected everyone. It was not uncommon for an Edokko to find some stranger sleeping in his privy or tucked in the space between houses. The Edokko would simply wake the person up, and the intruder would usually wander away sleepily, often mumbling apologies and making a vague excuse about being drunk or tired.
Kaze knew he was lucky to find a small room tucked upstairs in the eaves of a vegetable merchant’s house. He also knew it made his job of remaining invisible harder. It was easier to fool samurai into thinking he was a heimin than it was to fool the commoners themselves. This was made clear to him the first night he spent at the vegetable merchant’s house.
In addition to his room, his arrangement was to take a morning and evening meal with the household. Kaze didn’t shave his pate like a samurai and his clothes were the traveling clothes worn by commoners of all types, so there was nothing in his outward appearance that made him stand out. Kaze knew his words might betray him, so he was economical with his language around the merchant and his household. What he didn’t initially realize was that his intensive training as a samurai made him stand out in something as simple as eating.
The first night he ate with the household, Kaze noticed the merchant held his soup bowl by placing a hand on its bottom. Kaze grasped his bowl with his thumb and forefinger along the side of the bowl. The merchant took his chopsticks, his hashi, and put the food straight into his mouth. Kaze used the hashi by placing them to the side of his mouth. Kaze’s way of eating was a samurai’s way.
Because the merchant held the bowl cupped in his hand, someone could hit the bottom of the hand and splash hot soup into his face, temporarily leaving him vulnerable to attack. The same was true about the hashi. If he put them directly into his mouth, someone could suddenly hit the ends, driving them down his throat and making him vulnerable. Kaze’s way of eating avoided both possibilities and maintained zanshin, the state of mental alertness that left the samurai instantly ready for a sudden attack.
Kaze realized he was the only one eating like a samurai. He didn’t know if the rest of the household saw these differences, but he resolved to minimize his contact with the household. He thought he could fool samurai into thinking he was a heimin, at least for a little while, but he was sure he could not fool heimin into thinking he was one of them, especially if he lived with them. As a result, he kept himself in isolation at the vegetable merchant’s house, taking his meals alone and keeping contact and conversation to a minimum.
As he entered the merchant’s shop, the merchant’s wife and the woman who helped in the shop were taking in the flat wooden trays used to display the vegetables.
“Konbanwa, good evening,” the wife of the merchant said.
“Konbanwa,” Kaze answered.
“Will you be taking your meal in your room again, or will you join us for dinner?”
“In my room, if it is not too much trouble,” Kaze answered, starting up the steep stairs to his room. “Just tell me when it’s ready and I’ll come down and get it.”
“All right,” the wife responded.
Kaze saw both women looking at him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. He was sure they knew he had once been a samurai and that they pitied him for having tumbled so low, falling even from the precarious status of a ronin to that of a street entertainer. His samurai pride was repelled by the thought of pity, but his duty of finding the girl kept his pride in check. He finished climbing the stairs and went into the small room he had rented.
I’d like to follow him up those stairs,” the merchant’s wife said as she watched Kaze ascend to his room.
“You’d have to make room on the futon for a third, because I’ll be right behind you,” the servant said.