Jukichi’s son was a fine, sturdy lad who already in the public school
was laying a solid foundation for the technical training which later
was to fit him for an army career. He did not belie his inheritance.
His military instinct manifested itself in the ease with which he
excelled his mates in the martial exercises that formed part of his
school duties. Often, too, it was revealed in his proud bearing toward
his fellows. Ambition found large room in his small breast, and it was
his determination to rival and even excel the exploits and skill of
that great ancestor, Kokan, whose name he bore. Jukichi had begun his
instruction in swordsmanship early, and often the old Masamune blade,
that had been the pride of the Kudos for generations, was brought out to
take its part in the lessons. At fourteen Kokan was captain of a company
of his schoolmates, and the stuff that was in him showed in his grief
that his years unfitted him to bear a soldier’s part in the war with
China.
But the disappointment did not warp him. Rather it tended to confirm
his ambition. And if he had needed a spur he would have found it in the
boundless pride in him displayed by his sister, who was the playfellow
of his home. O-Mitsu-san was four years his junior. As long as she could
remember, from the days when she first toddled out into the yard on
her small _getas_, and robed in the wonderful kimono, gay with bright
butterflies, the days of her life had been devoted to adoration of her
brother. To her he was everything that was fine and noble, and his
imperious spirit received as its just due the deferential homage she
paid to his years and his sex. She was little more than a baby, in the
Western conception, when O-Haru, the gentle mother, went away on the long
journey to the Meido and left the house of Jukichi desolate, and it fell
to her to take her mother’s place in the management of the household and
the anxious care of the slender, steadily diminishing means of support.
“Though the eagle be starving, yet will he not eat grain,” say the
Japanese, and Jukichi fulfilled the saying. No one saw better than he
the inevitable end of the course he was pursuing. No one felt more than
he the need of doing something to secure an income. Kokan would soon
finish with the public schools, and before he would be sufficiently far
advanced to enter one of the Local Military Preparatory Schools he must
have some years of higher instruction, which no school in the city was
fitted to give. The only means of possible relief that presented itself
to Jukichi’s prejudiced view was some sort of trade, a vile bargaining
and selling for the sake of gaining the money which all his life he had
despised. Moreover, he knew that he was unfitted by training as well
as by nature for such work. The simple honesty of the old soldier, to
whom death was a small price to pay for honor, was no match for the
unscrupulous cleverness of men whose native sharpness had been developed
by years of practice in a profession from which nothing else was
expected. And so Jukichi drifted on.
Between O-Haru and Jukichi there had existed a serene sweetness and depth
of love such as seems impossible to the Western world, unused to the
Japanese way, where marriages are so often matters of arrangement rather
than sentiment. Perhaps it was the recollection of what she had been to
him, and the profound sense of his loss, that kept Jukichi a widower. But
the death of her mother brought some recompense to the little girl in the
transfer to her of much of the calm and confident affection which had
been O-Haru’s happiness. More and more her father grew to depend on her
in many matters in which he had followed the guidance of her mother, and
there developed in her a judgment and self-reliance not often found in
one of her years. While yet a child in age she was a woman in character.
Not much of her time was spent in school, yet her instruction was not
scanty for a Japanese girl. Most of it had been given by her father,
whose mode of life left him ample leisure for her lessons. She read
well and she had the books of the _Bunko_ that had been her mother’s. Of
this “Japanese Lady’s Library” she was diligently studious, and already
had attained familiarity with “Woman’s Household Instruction,” and the
“Lesser Learning for Woman,” and was intent upon the main part of the
work, the profound “Greater Learning.” Besides, she knew the “Hundred
Poems,” and often joined with her father and brother in an evening game
of quotations. There was little interruption of the quiet current of the
family life, and Jukichi loved to put aside pipe or book, when no visitor
had come, and play thus with his children. But neither he nor Kokan ever
gave a thought to the future of the girl, or noticed the promise she gave
of beautiful womanhood.
She was a lonely child for one so bright and winning. Her friends were
very few, not because of her condition, for poverty is all too common in
Japan to be disgraceful, and many families of great rank have known its
bitter pinch. It was rather because of a gentle, instinctive shyness that
made her recoil from the often boisterous gayety of her schoolmates.
But one there was who held large place in her childish esteem. It was a
friendship that began with her schooling. Her father had taken her to
the school that first day, for Kokan had finished the primary grades and
went to a different school in another part of the city. The master was
a large, stern man, with solemn, forbidding face, and O-Mitsu-san was
filled with fear. He took her into a great barren room, filled with hard,
high benches where sat a multitude of other little boys and girls. He
showed her a bench and told her to sit down, and when she took her place,
the other children looked at her and whispered together and laughed. She
was frightened, and presently, when the master, with a big whip in his
hand, called her name in a loud voice, she put her head down on her hands
and sobbed with fear. Then the other children laughed more and the master
commanded silence in a voice that terrified her. She was very miserable
and wished only to get away from that dreadful place and to go home
again. By and by a bell rang, and all the children stood up and went out.
But one little boy came to her and said shyly:
“Don’t cry, little girl. Come and play.”
After a time, when she had ceased to sob, she looked up into his round
face and said:
“What is your name, boy?”
The boy smiled and answered:
“Soichi. Come and play.”
Then they went out and played, and by and by, when it was time to go
home, the little boy walked along with her and she was glad. His home was
just around the corner from hers, in the fine big house in Azalea Street.
He was a funny boy, for he asked her not to tell her father that she had
played with him, or that he had walked part way home with her. When she
asked him why, he would not tell, but said that some day she would find
out, and that would be time enough to tell if she wanted to. Poor little
Soichi! Already the boy was learning the hard lesson that old disgrace,
however unmerited, cannot be put aside lightly, even by law, and the wise
young head knew that the child of the Eta was no playmate, in his world’s
eyes, for the daughter of a Samurai.
O-Mitsu cared not at all then. She knew only that he had been kind to her
in her wretchedness, and she liked him loyally for that, and loyally,
too, she kept her promise not to tell. So they met at school and played,
sometimes with other children but often by themselves. Thus several happy
months went by and then O-Mitsu got her first great lesson in the new
life of the nation. She found out about Soichi. There were plenty of
children to tell when it seemed there was a chance of causing pain, for
the Japanese child has no less a barbarian heart than many who live in
the Western world. The little girl was greatly troubled. She liked the
boy and enjoyed the games with him. But the daughter of a Samurai knew
her position. She had learned now that the stern looks of the master
masked a kindly heart, and her first fear of him was gone. To him she
went in her perplexity.
“Why is it,” she asked, “that the Eta boy comes to this school? Are not
Etas outcasts?”
The wise teacher smiled gently and said:
“That was true, O-Mitsu-san, but it is not so now. Did you not know that
the Emperor has promoted them, and given them the same rights as all the
rest of us?”
“Then are they like us now?” she asked.
“Yes, child,” replied the teacher softly, for he, too, was a Samurai and
knew what was in the heart of his little questioner, “and because it is
the Emperor’s will they must no longer be treated as they were.”
“I am glad,” said O-Mitsu shortly, and went out into the yard to join the
game in which Soichi had a part.
But when school was over and Soichi was walking toward home with her she
kept silent for a long time. At length, raising her eyes and looking at
him, she said:
“I know why now, Soichi.”
At once the boy stopped. The training of bitter experience prepared him
to hear her proudly scornful decision. But when she was silent he dared
at length to ask:
“Why do you not say it?”
But she smiled and answered:
“I do not care, and I will not tell. Teacher says it is right because the
Emperor did it. Come, let us go home.”
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