Dororo: A Novel
Tsuji Masaki
Part One:
The Tale of the
Hall of Hell Demons
Chapter 1
One day, an old woman came out of her house in the morning, looked up at the sky and gasped. Her hands reached upward in a posture of prayer. She was too petrified to move. She crawled along the street, keeping her head bowed, and saw her shadow split in two.
The old woman shivered with fear. There were two suns in the sky. How did something like that happen?! Everyone in the capital, including those of the Imperial Court and those with no social standing at all, stared up at the suns in stunned incomprehension.
The people weren’t the only ones that noticed the strange state of the sky. The air echoed with the sound of dogs howling in alarm. Horses neighed and cows were agitated enough to headbutt each other and try to run away from their pens and grazing fields. Birds gathered in the shadow of the eaves of the capital’s buildings, a crazy look in their eyes.
This must be some kind of nightmare. But no matter how much people tried rubbing their eyes or pinching themselves, they didn’t awaken. Famous priests in the capital started calling the appearance of the second sun the curse of the gods.
“It’s heaven’s wrath! The gods are displeased with us because we’re corrupt and greedy. The second sun is a sign of their displeasure. We should expect a severe punishment.”
It was the third year of the Chōroku Era, 1459. That was more than five hundred years ago. Anyone you asked would agree that 1459 was an extremely unlucky year. Ever since New Year’s Day, the people of Japan had suffered disaster after disaster. The shogun, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, [1] had lost his beloved concubine at the start of the year; she’d been assassinated at Lake Biwa. And now, two suns shone in the sky.
Those two suns continued to shine throughout June and July. In September, the rainy season obscured them. The heavy rains caused the Kamo River to overflow in a great and destructive flood for the first time in fifty years. [2] The devastation caused by this flood and other disasters continued for years after. Harvests were poor everywhere, and many people starved to death.
“Do you have anything to spare? A grain of rice? A chestnut? A handful of millet? Anything!”
“If I could only eat my fill one last time, I’d die happy.”
“Mommy! Daddy! I’m so hungry!”
As the flood waters receded, a terrible plague swept through the land. People dropped like flies, dying and being piled in heaps. There weren't enough gravediggers to bury the dead, and there wasn't enough space in cemeteries for them all, either. Many people disposed of their dead by floating them down the Kamo River. There were so many bodies in the river by the end of the season that they dammed its flow. The water turned poisonous, and there was a constant smell of decomposition and rot in Kyōto, the nation’s capital city.
Shogun Yoshimasa and the powerful clans who supported his rule were powerless in the face of these unending tragedies. The shogun ruled Kyōto nominally, but there was no order, no justice and no peace. The people who lived there felt like they weren’t really living at all--like they’d died already and were suffering the torments of hell.
This was the darkest time in all of Japan’s history.
The story that follows is largely unknown today because so few people knew about it then. But the people who lived it were survivors in this terrible world, and the world’s tragedy is also their own.
Translator's Notes
[1] Ashikaga Yoshimasa (Japanese: 足利 義政, January 20, 1436 January 27, 1490) Ashikawa Yoshimasa was the eighth shōgun of the Ashikaga shogunate who reigned from 1449 to 1473 during the Muromachi period of Japan. He is the ruling shōgun when Hyakkimaru is born.↩
[2] Kamo River (Japanese: 鴨川) The Kamo River is located in Kyōto Prefecture, Japan. The water level of the river is usually relatively low, but during the rainy season, the pathways sometimes flood in their lower stretches. ↩
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