The day was ordinary in every respect. He fought with his sisters, and his older brother disciplined him by cuffing him on the side of his head. It was an affectionate slap, enough to show Hachiro that his brother cared to discipline him but not enough to hurt. To punish him for his rowdiness, the older brother said Hachiro should go to the bamboo forest and gather bamboo shoots. This brought gales of laughter from his sisters and caused his face to burn red. Gathering takemono, bamboo shoots, was women’s work.
Hachiro voiced protest, but his older brother stood firm. In the hierarchy established in the family by gender and birth order, Hachiro was very low. He should have accepted his brother’s pronouncement without comment, but instead he tried to appeal to his father.
Hachiro’s father was a stern, silent man who, nonetheless, loved his children. In some ways he conformed to the idealized view of Japanese fathers recounted in the village’s folktales.
“Niisan, Older Brother, says I have to gather takemono like a girl,” Hachiro protested.
Hachiro’s father lifted the soup bowl to his lips and slurped down the final dregs. Looking over the edge of the bowl, he said, “If you’re going to tease and fight with your sisters, then you should do women’s work.”
The family had waited until the father had made his pronouncement, and the confirmation of the sentence triggered additional waves of laughter. Hachiro didn’t see what was so funny about his father’s statement, but he knew better than to challenge or question it. Under Confucian principles, the father was the master of the household, and the master had spoken.
Hachiro took a basket and the funny little hooked knife used to cut bamboo shoots and stomped out of the house. The bamboo forest was a good hour away from Hachiro’s village, but he had walked for only ten minutes or so when he heard the distant sound of shouting men behind him. He paused for a second, unsure of what all the noise meant, then turned to run back to the village.
Hachiro came to the top of a hill and could see the village was under attack. Troops had swooped down on the clustered farmhouses, setting fire to them by throwing lighted torches on the thatched roofs.
Fire was the most feared force in Hachiro’s life. He had already lived through several shakings of the earth that knocked articles off shelves and made sliding wood and paper doors pop from their tracks. He had lived though times of lean harvests and hunger, although the old people of the village laughed at the complaints of youngsters, telling them they were seeing nothing compared to conditions of true famine. He had lived through a war, although he wasn’t sure what the war was about or which side the Lord of his District was on. Only fire, with its terribly swift destruction of homes, had brought real terror into Hachiro’s life. And now he was learning that fire was just a minor by-product of what men could do.
Uncertain, Hachiro stood at the top of the hill and watched the scene unfolding below him. The troops attacking the village carried banners with a diamond surrounded by six bent bamboo leaves. This mon was unfamiliar. It was white on black cloth and looked like a malevolent insect. Outside the village a cluster of horsemen stood, watching the attack. In the center of the cluster was a tall, thin man with a black-winged helmet. In his hands was a black war fan, a metal fan used by generals to direct troops on the battlefield. The large size of the fan made the signals of the general easier to see.
The thin man seemed to be in charge, giving signals to direct different groups of troops in their attack on the village. He stood on the stirrups of his horse and waved a large group of troops toward a previously untouched corner of the village. Hachiro realized that the men were moving toward his house.
Transfixed by panic and fear, Hachiro saw the troops fan out and enter each of the houses. In some cases the doors of the houses had been barred, but the men easily kicked them down and entered. He saw a half dozen men entering his own house, and his heart stopped. Hachiro wanted desperately to know what the men who had entered his house were doing. To his sorrow, he suddenly found out.
He saw his mother rapidly backing out the door to his house. This strange sight was explained as the shaft of a spear followed her out of the house, then a soldier. Hachiro thought the man was just chasing his mother out of the house with the spear, until she collapsed several paces from the door. Then he realized that the point of the spear was embedded in his mother’s stomach and that she was holding the shaft, backing away in a desperate attempt to remove the weapon from her body.
“Okaasan!” Hachiro shouted.
His mother hit the dirt in front of the house, and the soldier leaned into the spear, driving it deeply into the writhing body of the screaming woman. Hachiro also heard the screams of his sisters coming from the house.
Galvanized into action, Hachiro dropped the basket and gripped the bamboo knife tightly. He started running down the hillside toward his house and the body of his mother. Before he had taken two steps, his foot hit a root, sending him tumbling down the hillside. He felt the sting of the knife biting into his side. Then his head hit a rock and blackness descended.
When he woke, he thought he was in hell. One eye seemed stuck shut from the dried blood that came from the gash on his head. But through the half-open other eye he could see only darkness and orange flames. He smelled acrid smoke. When he opened his parched lips, a bitter white ash entered his mouth. That set him coughing, and the coughs aggravated both the pain in his head and the pain in his side. He reached down and felt sticky blood on his flank.
If he had been carrying a regular knife, instead of the tiny, hooked takemono knife, Hachiro would be dead. Although the bamboo-shoot knife inflicted a nasty gash, it didn’t penetrate enough to hit a vital organ. Still, with the darkness, flames, smoke, pain, blood, and dizziness, Hachiro was not sure that he wasn’t dead. He tried to sit up to see what was around him, but he was so weak he could only roll over. Then he slipped into blackness again.
After he returned to consciousness, he had enough wits about him to realize the darkness was simply night. The smell of smoke and taste of ash was still strong, but the dancing orange flames were gone. He sat up and felt weak from loss of blood and his head wound. He slumped forward a few minutes, catching his breath and building his strength. Then he thought of his mother. What had been a village a few hours before was now a collection of embers. Hachiro realized the flames of hell he had seen were the flames of the village. In a way, it really was hell.
He stumbled to his feet and swayed unsteadily. Holding his side and walking slowly, he made his way down the hill and toward what was left of his house. The fire had burned down to just embers, and the dull glow from the collapsed beams provided scant light. As he approached, he saw a shapeless form in front of the house. He fell to his knees and reached out to touch the cold body of his mother. With trembling fingers, he stroked her hair and cried tears of pain, loss, and anger.
When the sun came out, he made his way to the stream next to the village to get a drink. When he approached the water, he recoiled in terror. His image, captured in the sluggish waters of the stream, was a frightening specter of dried blood, bruised flesh, and matted hair. He realized that he must have looked dead to the troops that destroyed his home village, which is why he survived.
He never found out which side or whose troops slaughtered the village. He didn’t even know why or if the troops even had a reason.
With his family killed and his village destroyed, Hachiro fled to the mountains. There he was stopped by Boss Kuemon’s brigands and captured. At first he was used as a kind of slave, but soon he was adopted more like a pet. The brigands had even decided that they would teach him to be a killer, but thus far they had been unsuccessful.