Hyakkimaru's Birth
Book 1 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 2 - Enlightenment
Oniwakamaru would turn seven in the spring 1456. By then, he'd fully recovered from his surgeries and had a complete, well-proportioned face. His hair grew out; Jukai and Sakuzō tied it in a knot behind his head. When he was dressed in a small unlined kimono, he resembled the child of a samurai or a lord.
Sakuzō was forced to build his cart larger to carry Oniwakamaru around. Seen from a distance, he looked like he was taking a samurai's child out to play or have a picnic on the mountain. Thanks to his surgeries, there was no need to hide his face anymore.
Sakuzō pushed the cart now instead of pulling it; pulling it was becoming too difficult. The back of Oniwakamaru's head was in front of him as he walked.
"You look just like Yoshitsune," Sakuzō said.
"You've seen Yoshitsune, uncle Sakuzō?" Oniwakamaru asked.
"Um, well..." He blinked and thought for a moment. "Yoshitsune lived two hundred and ninety years before you were born."
"Oh." Oniwakamaru seemed disappointed.
Sakuzō scratched his head, then laughed. "I've seen pictures of him, though."
Oniwakamaru had only just started to learn history and kanji. Sakuzō, who never had a formal education, was learning quite a bit, himself. Jukai could only teach Oniwakamaru using his voice, so it was fortunate that Oniwakamaru had an excellent memory. Once he heard something, he rarely forgot it.
Jukai had gone to Shizuhara that day to make house calls and check up on patients. Sakuzō and Oniwakamaru weren't the only patients who needed him; there were plenty of old men and children that needed care in the village that would get none if not for Jukai.
So Sakuzō pushed Oniwakamaru down to the river in the cart, describing trees and plants as they went. Oniwakamaru couldn't see, but passing this calm and leisurely time on Mount Kurama with him warmed Sakuzō's heart. He pushed the cart all the way to the gate of Kurama Temple, then stopped. He'd never come so close the temple with the cart before.
"Uncle Sakuzō," Oniwakamaru said. "Did Yoshitsune have a father?
The question was unexpected. In Jukai's tales of Yoshitsune, his parentage was always kept vague. Jukai had focused on Yoshitsune learning the sword from tengu, the long-nosed goblins that lived in the mountains, and on Benkei's epic battle with Yoshitsune on Gojō bridge.
"Everyone has parents," Sakuzō said. "Why do you ask?" He wasn't sure what Oniwakamaru wanted to know, or why.
"What was his dad like?" Oniwakamaru asked.
"His name was Minamoto no Yoshitomo,"1 Sakuzō said. "He was a magnificent samurai and warrior, just like his son."
"What about his mother?"
"Her name was Tokiwa Gozen."2
"Hm. What about my mother? What's she like?"
"Uh..."
"Don't you know?" Oniwakamaru asked.
"She was beautiful," Sakuzō said. He was so flustered by the question that he said the first thing that came into his head. "More beautiful than Tokiwa Gozen, even."
There was a long pause. "Anyway, isn't it nice today?" Sakuzō asked, trying to change the subject.
Oniwakamaru refused to be sidetracked. "Uncle Sakuzō, is my mom really dead?"
"Yes, it's true. It's just like your dad said."
"Where is her grave?" Oniwakamaru asked.
"Her grave?"
Sakuzō and Jukai had never considered that particular detail. Jukai had forbidden Sakuzō to speak about finding Oniwakamaru in the Takano River.
"It's far away," Sakuzō said. "Very, very far away."
"I want to visit it," Oniwakamaru said.
"We'll take you someday," Sakuzō said as he wiped cold sweat from his forehead. He was, very briefly, glad that Oniwakamaru couldn't see. But he was smart—and he was learning about history and legends. He was also curious and difficult to distract, as Sakuzō was rapidly discovering.
"What was her name?" Oniwakamaru asked.
"Her name?"
"I want to know her name, at least. I don't know anything else about her."
"Uh..." This was another detail that Sakuzō and Jukai hadn't thought of. "I, uh, never heard it from taifu. I mean, your father."
Oniwakamaru said nothing in response. Sakuzō breathed a sigh of relief.
Oniwakamaru tilted his head toward the temple's gate.
"What is it?" Sakuzō asked.
"Someone's coming," Oniwakamaru said.
"Huh?" Sakuzō looked around, but saw no sign of anyone. "There's no one there," he said. "Maybe a deer ran past?"
"No. There are people."
At just that moment, two militant monks3 emerged from the temple and descended the path to the temple's gate. They moved quietly, crouched down slightly as if they were wary of being seen.
Sakuzō caught sight of them and froze. "We have to go back," he whispered. "It's militant monks." He turned the cart around and started pushing it back up the mountain path, but he was too slow.
One of the monks called out, "Stop!" His tall wooden clogs kicked up dust as he chased Sakuzō and Oniwakamaru up the path. Sakuzō had no chance of escaping with the cart.
The two monks caught up, then readied their naginata. They looked down at Oniwakamaru and grimaced.
"What the fuck is that thing?" one monk asked. "Looks like a samurai's cock." He faced Sakuzō. "And what about you? You're not hiding any weapons, are you?"
"No!" Sakuzō said. "I'm no warrior. I live in the village at the foot of the mountain." He would have told any lie to get out of this situation as quickly as possible. "We...just...came to....see the temple." Nerves made his previous speech impediment return.
"You've heard about the recent troubles, I take it?" one of the monks asked. "You could be a spy trying to find a gap in our defenses. Anyone who sets foot on temple grounds needs to be thoroughly examined."
The previous year, the shōgun's deputy in the Kantō region, Ashikaga Shigeuji, and a local lord, Uesugi Noritada, became locked in a violent conflict for control of the region. Their conflict ended with Uesugi Noritada's death, but the struggle between their clans was just beginning. And while the shōgun was busy putting down resistance from the Uesugi Clan, there was a peasant uprising near the capital of Kyōto. Quelling revolts was a normal part of shōgun duties, but the militant monks of Tōfuku Temple created a checkpoint to block the way of incoming soldiers, which made it more difficult for the shōgun's armies to travel.4
One of the monks pointed the blade of his naginata at Oniwakamaru. "Get out of the cart, little samurai cock."
Oniwakamaru's false eyes fixed on the man. His eyes couldn't actually move and he never blinked, so his stare was unsettling and creepy. "If I'm a samurai's cock, you're a monk shat from a monkey's asshole," he said in an assertive—almost threatening—tone.
"You cheeky bastard!" The monk raised his naginata and prepared to strike.
"Ah!" Sakuzō cried out. The cart suddenly tipped over; Oniwakamaru tumbled into the grass near the path and rolled away. He had learned from Sakuzō and Jukai just how dangerous militant monks could be.
Sakuzō was stunned at Oniwakamaru's smart mouth; he didn't think that he or Jukai had taught the boy to swear like that. Maybe the wild monkeys had taught that to him somehow.
"Burn in hell, brat!" the monk called out while he chased after Oniwakamaru, naginata held aloft. He paused in place and hurled the naginata straight at Oniwakamaru.
Sakuzō screamed.
Oniwakamaru kept rolling. The naginata missed him and embedded itself in the muddy ground. Oniwakamaru had heard the naginata coming and changed the course of his trajectory by using his head to shift his weight.
At just that moment, Jukai passed him by on his way back from the village of Shizuhara. He saw Oniwakamaru roll into the path and quickly concealed himself and his horse behind a tree. He was so astonished at what he was seeing that it took him a few moments to fully react.
The monk retrieved his naginata and squinted down at Oniwakamaru. He saw quite clearly that Oniwakamaru had no limbs. "What the hell?" he muttered. He raised his weapon again.
Oniwakamaru had dodged the naginata when it was thrown, but he had no way to avoid a direct attack. The tree he'd rolled against prevented him from fleeing further. Jukai had to pull the monk's attention away from Oniwakamaru in order to save him.
He squeezed his knees to encourage his horse into motion while shouting, "Oi! You there! Stop! What kind of monk murders children?"
"What?"
The monk faced Jukai with his weapon held high. Another monk appeared on the path behind the first one, also armed with a naginata. The two monks pointed their weapons at the still-mounted Jukai.
"Fuck off! This don't concern you!" one of the monks spat. The other attempted to stab the horse; Jukai let the animal have its head. The horse reared, kicking the closest monk hard in the chest. He was trampled to the ground and didn't rise.
Jukai bent down and removed the naginata from the fallen monk's hand. The trampled monk got slowly to his feet and drew the sword at his hip. His fellow monk slashed his naginata back and forth through the air, trying to cut down the horse.
Sakuzō rushed forward and gathered up Oniwakamaru in his arms, then concealed them both in a clump of tall grass a little distance away from the path. He watched the battle with bated breath.
"They say that Benkei the warrior monk was clever," Jukai said. "He knew when he was beaten and understood when to stand down. You two, though, seem foolish enough to throw your lives away for no reason."
"Shut up, old man. We'll wipe the floor with you."
In war, often times the warrior with the cooler head will prevail over warriors who charge in recklessly and let rage control their movements. This was certainly the case now.
Jukai made two quick strikes with his naginata from horseback. The blade whistled, cutting through the air as the blunt end of the weapon struck one monk on his bald pate and the other in the pit of his stomach. Fast, straight strikes of this kind were taught as part of the shōrin-ryū5 style of Okinawan karate. Both monks fell to the ground and didn't move.
Sakuzō's face went pale. "Are they...dead?" he asked.
"Just knocked out," Jukai said. "They'll be down for a while, but we should get out of here before they get up."
Jukai felt sincere relief at having saved Oniwakamaru, but he was most interested in understanding how Oniwakamaru had saved himself from being skewered by the thrown naginata. Was it extrasensory perception? Did he have an ability similar to vision? Had the god of Iwakura Shrine given him some kind of extra protection to save his life when he was in danger?
Jukai didn't know, but he did know that an ordinary child would not have been able to avoid being stabbed.
Oniwakamaru wasn't aware that what he'd done was extraordinary, but his perspective of Jukai changed completely after that day. His father was a warrior as well as a doctor, and he had saved his life—again.
1 Minamoto no Yoshitomo was the head of the Minamoto Clan. His son Minamoto no Yoritomo founded the Kamakura shogunate, the first shogunate in Japan.↩
2 Tokiwa Gozen (1138 – c. 1180) was a Japanese noblewoman of the late Heian period and mother of the great samurai general Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Sources disagree as to whether she was a concubine or wife to Minamoto no Yoshitomo, of which she bore Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Lady Tokiwa is primarily associated, in literature and art, with an incident in which she fled through the snow, protecting her young son with her robes, during the Heiji Rebellion in 1160. She is also known as Hotoke Gozen, or Lady Buddha.↩
3 Militant monks were Buddhist warrior monks of both medieval and feudal Japan. At certain points in history, they held considerable power, obliging the imperial and military governments to collaborate. The prominence of the militant monks arose in parallel with the ascendancy of the Tendai school's influence between the 10th and 17th centuries. The warriors protected land and intimidated rival schools of Buddhism, becoming a significant factor in the spread of Buddhism and the development of different schools during the Kamakura period.The militant monks of Japan shared many similarities with the European lay brothers, members of a monastic order who might not have been ordained. Much like the Teutonic Order, the warrior monks of Germany, and the crusading orders, militant monks did not operate as individuals, or even as members of small, individual temples, but rather as warriors in a large extended brotherhood or monastic order. The home temple of a monastic order might have had several, if not dozens or a hundred, smaller monasteries, training halls, and subordinate temples connected to it.↩
4 The assassination of Uesugi Noritada by the shogun's deputy in the Kantō region, Ashikaga Shigeuji, in 1454 kicked off a series of wars and skirmishes known to history as the Kyōtoku incident. The Ashikaga, Uesugi, and other clans leaped into battle, either defending or assaulting Shigeuji as they fought for control of the Kantō region.↩
5 Shōrin-ryū is the Okinawan school of karate.s It is a Japanese martial art considered to be a modified version of Shaolin Kung Fu. Shōrin-ryū is a holistic system whose training methods are divided into three parts: self-defense training, mental training and, health training. The basis are the concepts that "spirit and body are not separable" and that it is integral to train both the body and mind as one.↩
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