高瀬舟 English

The Takase-bune is a small boat that plies up and down the Takase River in Kyoto.

In the Tokugawa period, when a criminal in Kyoto was sentenced to exile on a remote island, his relatives were summoned to the prison compound, where they were permitted to bid him farewell.

The criminal was then placed aboard the Takase-bune and transported to Osaka.

The escort duty fell to the doshin, officers under the Kyoto town magistrate, and it was customary for these doshin to permit one prominent member of the criminal's family to sail along to Osaka.

This was not an officially sanctioned practice, but was what might be called a matter of looking the other way — a tacit allowance.

Of course, those condemned to island exile in those days were recognized as having committed serious offenses, yet by no means was the majority composed of the truly vicious sort who killed and set fire to things in the course of robbery.

The greater part of the criminals who boarded the Takase-bune were people who, through what was called a lapse of judgment, had fallen into unexpected wrongdoing.

To give a common example: men who had attempted what was then called a lovers' suicide pact, had killed the woman, and then survived alone.

Carrying such criminals, the Takase-bune set out around the time the vesper bell rang, passing the darkened houses of Kyoto on both banks, heading east, crossing the Kamo River, and proceeding downstream.

Inside the boat, the criminal and his kin would speak through the night of their circumstances.

Always, always, it was regret over things that could never be undone.

The doshin escorting them listened from nearby and came to know intimately the wretched circumstances of the families from which the criminals came.

These were circumstances that a magistrate's official could never have glimpsed, even in dreams, hearing only formal testimony in the white-sanded court or reading written depositions at the office desk.

Since those who served as doshin were of many different temperaments, there were cold-hearted ones who found all of this merely bothersome and wished they could stop up their ears, and there were also those who took another person's sorrow deeply into themselves, and though duty prevented them from showing it outwardly, silently nursed an aching in their chests.

When a doshin of particularly tender heart and ready tears happened to be put in charge of escorting criminals and their kin who had fallen into exceptionally tragic circumstances, that doshin could not hold back unguarded tears.

And so, escort duty on the Takase-bune was dreaded among the doshin of the town magistrate's office as an unwelcome assignment.

――――――――――――――――

It was some time ago — when exactly, one cannot say.

Perhaps it was during the Kansei era, when Lord Shirakawa Rakuo was holding the reins of government in Edo.

On a spring evening when the cherry blossoms of Chion-in were scattering to the sound of the vesper bell, a criminal unlike any seen before was placed aboard the Takase-bune.

His name was Kisuke, a man of about thirty years, with no fixed place of residence.

He had no relatives who might have been summoned to the prison compound, so he boarded the boat entirely alone.

The doshin Haneda Shobei, ordered to escort him and having boarded alongside, had been told only that Kisuke was a criminal convicted of killing his younger brother.

Now, in the time it took to bring him from the prison compound to the landing, Shobei observed the bearing of this gaunt, pale-complexioned Kisuke: he was genuinely composed, genuinely docile, respectful of Shobei as a government officer, and appeared at every turn to avoid giving any offense.

And yet this was not the submissive posturing one often saw among criminals — the kind that feigns meekness to curry favor with those in power.

Shobei found it strange.

Even after they boarded the boat, he did not merely keep watch from duty's remove, but continued to pay close and careful attention to Kisuke's every movement.

It was a night when the wind had died since dusk, and a thin veil of cloud spread across the entire sky, blurring the outline of the moon, and the warmth of the approaching summer seemed to rise as mist from the earth of both riverbanks and from the river bed.

Once they had left the lower part of the city behind and crossed the Kamo River, the surroundings fell utterly still, and there was nothing to be heard but the murmur of water parting at the bow.

Though criminals were permitted to sleep aboard the night boat, Kisuke made no move to lie down; he gazed up at the moon, whose light waxed and waned with the drifting of the clouds, and remained silent.

His brow was serene, and in his eyes there was a faint brightness.

Shobei did not look at him directly, yet never let his gaze stray from Kisuke's face.

And inwardly he kept repeating: strange, strange.

This was because Kisuke's face, seen from any angle — front or side — seemed unmistakably happy, as though, had there been no need to show deference toward a government official, he might have started to whistle or hum a little tune.

Shobei thought to himself:

He had lost count of how many times he had served as overseer of this Takase-bune.

And yet the criminals he carried always presented very nearly the same pitiful, heartrending appearance.

But what was the matter with this man?

He wore the face of someone riding a pleasure boat.

They said his crime was killing his brother, but however bad the brother may have been, and whatever the circumstances that led to the killing, a person with any natural feeling could not be at ease.

Could this pallid, thin man be one of the world's rarest monsters, utterly devoid of that thing called human feeling?

Somehow he did not seem so.

Could he perhaps have lost his mind?

No, no.

For that, there was not a single word or action out of place.

What was the matter with this man?

For Shobei, the more he pondered Kisuke's bearing the less he could make sense of it.

――――――――――――――――

After a while, Shobei could contain himself no longer, and spoke to him.

"Kisuke. What are you thinking about?"

"Yes," Kisuke replied,

and glancing about him, apparently worried that he had been caught doing something wrong by the officer, he straightened his posture and studied Shobei's expression.

Shobei felt he ought to explain what had prompted his sudden question and offer some excuse for stepping outside his official role.

And so he said:

"No — there's no special reason I asked. The truth is, I've been wanting to hear how you feel about going to the island. I've sent many a man to the islands on this boat. They've all had very different stories, but every one of them grieved at going to the islands and spent the whole night weeping with the relatives who came to see them off and board with them. But looking at you, you don't seem to be troubled by the prospect of going to the island at all. What are you thinking, exactly?"

Kisuke smiled gently.

"Thank you for your kind words. It is true that going to the island would be a sorrowful thing for others. I can imagine that feeling well. But that is because they are people who have lived comfortably in the world. Kyoto is a splendid place, yet I do not think that anywhere I might go could match the hardship I have endured here. In His Lordship's mercy, my life has been spared and I am being sent to the island. Though the island may be a harsh place, it cannot be a place where demons dwell. Until now I have had no place anywhere that I could truly call my own. This time, His Lordship commands me to stay on the island — the very fact that I may settle and remain in the place I am commanded to stay is, above all, what I find most deeply grateful. Moreover, though my body is as frail as this, I have never in my life fallen ill, so however hard the labor on the island, I trust it will not damage my health. And on the occasion of being sent to the island, I was given two hundred mon in coin. I have it here with me."

Saying this, Kisuke placed a hand on his chest.

It was the law of the time that those sentenced to island exile were to be given two hundred copper coins.

Kisuke continued.

"I am ashamed to confess it, but never once until today have I had two hundred mon in coin tucked like this in my breast. Whenever I found work to hold onto, I would seek it out and toil without sparing my bones. And whatever money I received, I always had to pass it from my right hand to another's left without delay. Even when I could buy food with cash directly, that was my better times; usually I was paying back what I had borrowed and borrowing again what came after. Then, in prison, I was fed without having to work. That alone made me feel I was doing something unworthy by His Lordship's generosity. And then, when I left the prison, I was given these two hundred mon. Since I continue to eat at His Lordship's provision just as before, I am able to keep this two hundred mon without spending it. To hold money as my own possession — this is the first time in my life. I do not know yet what kind of work will be possible on the island, but I am taking pleasure in the thought of using these two hundred mon as my starting capital for whatever work I do there."

With this, Kisuke fell silent.

Shobei said, "Hmm, is that so,"

but everything he heard so far exceeded his expectations that he too fell into thought for a time, saying nothing.

Shobei was approaching the age one might call early middle years, and his wife had already borne him four children.

His aged mother was also still alive, so the household numbered seven.

He lived a life of frugality so rigorous that others called him a miser, and he had virtually no clothing made beyond what his duties required and a sleeping robe.

Unfortunately, however, he had taken a wife from a family of prosperous merchants.

His wife was well-intentioned in her desire to manage the household on the stipend rice her husband received, but having been raised pampered in a wealthy family, she could not tighten the purse strings to the degree that would fully satisfy her husband.

Time and again, month's end would come with a shortfall.

Then his wife would secretly bring money from her parents' home to balance the accounts.

This was because her husband loathed debt as much as he loathed a caterpillar.

Such things could not ultimately go unnoticed by the husband.

Shobei already felt it a burden on his conscience when his wife's family gave them gifts at the five seasonal festivals, or clothed the children for their Shichi-Go-San celebrations; so when he perceived that gaps in their finances had been filled for them, his face did not lighten.

This was the cause of the occasional turbulence in the Haneda household, which was otherwise free of any particularly serious discord.

Now, as Shobei listened to Kisuke's account, he compared Kisuke's circumstances to his own.

Kisuke had said that even when he found work and earned wages, he had to pass the money from hand to hand without keeping any.

What a pitiful, wretched state of affairs that was.

Yet if he turned and reflected on his own circumstances, how much of a difference was there truly between Kisuke and himself?

Was he himself not simply passing his stipend rice from the government from one hand to another as he lived?

The difference between them was, so to speak, merely a matter of columns on the abacus; and he, for his part, had not even the savings equivalent to Kisuke's two hundred mon that Kisuke so treasured.

Shifting the calculation by those columns, it was no wonder that Kisuke rejoiced over two hundred copper mon, regarding them as a hoard.

That feeling, Shobei could grasp well enough from his own position.

And yet, however he shifted those columns in his mind, what remained strange was Kisuke's freedom from desire, his knowledge of sufficiency.

Kisuke had struggled to find work in the world.

Once he found it, he toiled without sparing his bones and was satisfied simply to be able to keep himself fed.

So when, in prison, food that had been so hard to come by was given as though dropped from heaven — obtained without labor — he was astonished, and tasted a satisfaction he had never known in his life.

However Shobei shifted his columns, he recognized that a great gulf existed between Kisuke and himself.

The life he maintained on his stipend rice was sometimes short of the mark, but on the whole its income and outgo balanced.

It was a life lived to the full extent of his means.

Yet he had almost never felt contentment in it.

Day to day he lived neither sensing good fortune nor ill.

But deep in his heart there lurked a dread: what would become of him if he were suddenly dismissed from office, or fell gravely ill? — and whenever he discovered that his wife had taken money from her parents' home to fill some gap, this dread would raise its head above the threshold of his consciousness.

From what did this gulf arise, after all?

If one looked only at the surface and declared it was simply because Kisuke had no family ties while he himself did, that would seem to settle the matter.

But that was untrue.

Even if he were entirely alone in the world, it seemed somehow unlikely that he could ever feel as Kisuke felt.

The root of this lay somewhere deeper, Shobei thought.

Shobei turned his thoughts vaguely to something like the nature of a human life.

When a person suffers from illness, he thinks: if only I had no illness.

When he has no food from day to day, he thinks: if only I could eat.

When he has no savings set aside for emergencies, he thinks: if only I had even a little put by.

When he does have savings, he thinks: if only those savings were greater still.

Pursuing this line of thought from one thing to the next, one cannot know where a person might ever find a place to stop.

And here, right before his eyes, showing him what it looks like to have stopped — that was this Kisuke, Shobei realized.

Shobei looked at Kisuke anew, his eyes wide with wonder.

At that moment it seemed to Shobei as though a halo radiated from the head of Kisuke as he gazed up at the sky.

――――――――――――――――

Shobei, keeping his eyes on Kisuke's face, called out again: "Kisuke-san."

With this he addressed him.

This time he said "-san,"

but it was not that he had deliberately changed the form of address with any full awareness.

The instant the word left his mouth and entered his own ears, Shobei noticed the impropriety of the address, but he could not take back what had already been said.

"Yes,"

answered Kisuke, and hearing himself addressed as "-san,"

he seemed to find it strange, and cautiously studied Shobei's expression.

Shobei, suppressing the slight awkwardness he felt, said:

"I seem to keep asking you things, but — the reason you're being sent to the island this time is that you killed someone, I'm told. Would you tell me the story of it as well?"

Kisuke appeared deeply abashed, and said, "Certainly,"

and began to speak in a low voice.

"It was a terrible lapse of judgment, and I did something dreadful — I scarcely know how to speak of it. When I think back on it afterward, I marvel that I could have done such a thing — even I find it hard to fathom. I was completely beside myself when I did it. I lost both my parents to epidemic illness when I was small, and my brother and I were left behind, the two of us. At first the people of the neighborhood took pity on us, as one might pity puppies born under the eaves, and gave us their charity, so we ran errands for the whole neighborhood and grew up without starving or freezing. As we gradually grew larger and searched for work, we tried as much as possible to stay together, and helped each other as we labored. Last autumn — this is when it happened. My brother and I entered a weaving workshop in Nishijin and were set to work doing what they call sorabiki — operating overhead pulleys. Then my brother fell ill and could no longer work. At that time we were sleeping and living in a place like a crude makeshift hut in Kitayama, crossing the Kamiya River bridge to go to the workshop, and when I came home in the evenings with food and things, my brother would be waiting and would say he was sorry, so sorry, to make me earn alone. One day I came home as usual, thinking nothing of it, and found my brother face-down on the futon, with blood all around him. I was startled and threw down the bamboo-leaf bundle I was carrying and ran to his side and said 'What happened, what happened?' My brother lifted a face drained white, both cheeks and jaw stained with blood, and looked at me — but he could not speak. With each breath he drew, there came only a hissing sound from the wound in his throat. I could make no sense of what had happened, and when I said 'What's wrong — did you cough up blood?' and tried to draw closer, my brother propped himself up a little with his right hand on the floor, raising himself slightly.

His left hand was pressed firmly against the place below his chin, and between his fingers thick clots of dark blood were seeping out.

With his eyes, my brother seemed to signal me not to come closer, and then he began to speak.

He had finally become able to say something.

'I'm sorry. Please forgive me. It's an illness I'll never recover from anyway, so I thought if I died quickly I could give you some relief. I thought if I cut the windpipe I could die right away, but the breath only leaked out from there and I couldn't die. I pushed as deep as I could, thinking deeper, deeper, but it slipped sideways. The blade doesn't seem to have broken. If you can pull this out cleanly, I think I'll be able to die. Talking is so painful I can hardly bear it. Please lend me your hand and pull it out.'

That is what he said.

When my brother loosened his left hand, the breath leaked out from there again.

I could not find any words to say, and in silence I peered at the wound on my brother's throat — it appeared that he had held the razor in his right hand and sliced across the windpipe, but as he could not die with that alone, he had then thrust the razor in deeper, digging into it.

Only the handle protruded from the wound, a bare two inches or so.

Having seen all that, I could form no plan of what to do, and looked at my brother's face.

My brother was staring steadily at me.

With great effort I managed to say, 'Wait — I'll go call a doctor.'

That is what I said.

My brother gave me a resentful look, but pressed his throat firmly with his left hand again and said, 'What good is a doctor — oh, it's agony, pull it out quickly, please.'

That is what he said.

I felt as though I had lost all sense of direction, and could only stare at my brother's face.

In moments such as these, strangely, the eyes speak.

My brother's eyes were saying 'Hurry, hurry,'

and they looked at me as if filled with reproach.

In my head something like a spinning wheel was going round and round, but my brother's eyes did not cease their terrible urging.

And that reproachful look in his eyes grew ever more fierce, until at last it became a glare of hatred, as though he were glaring at an enemy.

Watching that, I finally came to feel that I had no choice but to do as my brother had said.

I said, 'There's nothing to be done — I will pull it out.'

That is what I said.

Then the look in my brother's eyes changed completely, brightening, with evident relief and joy.

Thinking I had to do it in one decisive motion, I threw my body forward, almost striking my knees against the floor.

My brother released the right hand he had been propping himself up with, and shifted the elbow of the hand that had been pressing his throat to the floor, and lay on his side.

I gripped the handle of the razor firmly and drew it out in one pull.

At that moment, an old woman from the neighborhood came in through the front door, which I had left fastened from the inside.

She was a woman I had asked to come and give my brother his medicine and look after things while I was away.

It had already grown quite dark inside the room, so I could not tell how much the old woman had seen, but she gave one cry and then fled, leaving the front door wide open.

When I pulled out the razor, I took care only to pull it quickly and pull it straight, but somehow the sensation of pulling it out felt as though I had cut something that had not been cut before.

The blade was facing outward, so it must have cut on the outward side.

I sat there vacantly, still gripping the razor, watching the old woman come in and then dash out again.

After the old woman had gone, I came to my senses and looked at my brother — my brother had already stopped breathing.

A great deal of blood had poured from the wound.

From then, until the elders of the neighborhood arrived and took me to the ward office, I sat with the razor beside me, staring at my brother's face as he lay dead with his eyes half open."

Kisuke, who had been speaking with his head slightly bowed and looking up at Shobei's face from below, finished these words and let his gaze drop to his knees.

Kisuke's account was well ordered in its logic.

One might even say it was almost too well ordered.

This was because he had spent nearly half a year turning those events over in his mind again and again, and each time he was questioned at the ward office and examined at the town magistrate's office, he had been made to go over his account with the utmost care.

Shobei listened as though seeing the scene unfold before his very eyes, but the doubt whether this could truly be called killing a brother, or killing a person, had risen in him from the moment he was halfway through the account, and even now that the account was finished, he could not resolve that doubt.

His brother had said: if you pull out the razor I think I'll be able to die, so pull it out.

He had pulled it out, let him die — killed him, one might say.

Yet it appeared that the brother would have had to die regardless, even if left as he was.

That he had wanted to die sooner was because he could not endure the suffering.

Kisuke could not bear to watch that suffering.

He had ended his life thinking to deliver him from that suffering.

Was that a crime?

That he killed was certainly a crime.

Yet when he thought that it had been done to relieve suffering, a doubt arose there that he could not by any means resolve.

In Shobei's mind, after turning the matter over in many different ways, there arose a sense that he had no choice but to entrust the judgment to one higher than himself — a sense that he had no choice but to defer to authority.

Shobei had come to think that he would simply make the magistrate's judgment his own.

Even so, something that did not quite sit right still lingered somewhere inside Shobei, and he could not help feeling as though he wanted to ask the magistrate about it.

Into the gradually deepening hazy night, the Takase-bune, carrying its two silent figures, glided across the surface of the dark water.