Takahashi felt a twinge in his aging back as he raked the sand in the rock garden. It was midmorning, and he had been up since sunrise, first doing zazen in his cell for an hour, then eating a frugal breakfast of rice balls and cold tea in the refectory before going into the forest with the other monks. A cedar had blown down during a recent storm, and the monks had brought saws and hand-axes to cut its branches into firewood. The trunk would be left where it lay to season for a year, and then fashioned into planking for a planned extension of the refectory. The monks of Kennin-ji never cut down living trees. They would fall when it was time for them to fall.
After he had helped the others bring in the firewood, Takahashi went with his dog to the garden to renew the circles around the precisely-placed rocks. He’d trained the dog to sit patiently outside the garden, and he patted its big, square head and was rewarded by a lick of his hand. His wooden rake turned up a black stone, and he bent to pick it up. It fit into the palm of his hand, and he rolled it around, relishing its smoothness and small, dense weight. Touch was as important to him as his other senses, for in his past life he had been a samurai, and when learning archery, he had trained with a blind sensei. The sensei had lost his sight to river fever when he was thirty, but by then he was already a master archer. He taught Takahashi to practice drawing his bow and releasing his arrow so many times that the action became part of his body’s memory. It was the feel of the bow flexing in his left hand and the string tautening against the two fingers of his right one that guided the arrow’s flight, not conscious aiming. Empty your mind, the sensei told him, and the arrow will aim itself.
At the monastery he had come to savor textures almost as much as he savored his simple food: the lush feel of the moss that grew beneath the torii gate under his bare feet, the roughness of his coarse linen robe against his shoulders, the soft impact of rain on his shaven head, the kiss of a breeze on his cheeks.
When he had decided to enter the monastery, he’d used his wakisashi to cut off the topknot that marked him as a samurai, making sure to nick himself slightly on the cheek. Both the short sword and the longer katana were alive, and to draw either one of them without shedding blood was dishonorable, even dangerous. During his time with Oda Nobunaga, he heard of a swordsman who was dismissed from the harsh daimyo’s service for refusing to kill an enemy samurai whom he had disarmed. His sense of place in the order of bushido was destroyed, and he went rogue, becoming a bandit who used his weapons as if they were butcher knives. One day, as he set upon a wealthy merchant traveling to Kyoto for the Cherry Blossom Festival, his katana turned in his hands and cut off his own leg. He bled to death in the road because no one would help him. Thieves made off with his swords, and what became of them was unknown.
Takahashi’s own swords were very old, forged long before the onset of the civil wars that had lasted more than a hundred years. They had been passed from father to son for many generations in his family, and were said to have been made by the sea-god Susanoo, who forged the Kusanagi at the dawn of time, the katana that was found piercing the body of the Dragon Leviathan.
He had no son. Oda Nobunaga had arranged his marriage to the daughter of one of his prefects, a pretty young woman named Fumiko. She was an accomplished koto player, a sweet singer, and a skilled calligrapher. She was also very smart. Following custom, she defered meekly to her husband in public, but when she was alone with him, she spoke her mind about events going on in the world, daring to suggest that the devastation caused by the wars outweighed the reasons for fighting them. Her opinion shook Takahashi to the core. War was his vocation, his reason for being. Without it, there would be no samurai class, and the hierarchy that governed society would collapse like a badly-built sea wall when a tsunami hits it.
By rights, he should have sent her back to her father with a stern message about her dangerous notions. But it was not his place, as a low-ranking samurai, to criticize the daughter of a daimyo. And besides, he had fallen in love with her, in part because she spoke her mind. So he listened to her, and admitted that however noble and and proper the wars might be for those trained to fight, far fewer samurai died in honorable combat than the number of peasants who got caught between clashing armies. Slowly, painfully, he began to imagine a world without war – and without class distinctions. When he was in the field, he did his best to avoid the inhabitants of the villages in which he fought, even if they threw stones at him or tried to strike him with their mattocks and hoes. He wore full armor, and he knew they could not hurt him badly, no matter how angry they were. So he shrugged off their blows and concentrated on the enemy samurai. He killed many of them, because he was very skilled with his weapons – but not so skilled that he always killed cleanly. He remembered a warrior who managed to parry his katana just enough that its blade struck his shoulder instead of his neck. The force of Takahashi’s double-handed swing drove his sword down through the man’s body as far as his left breast, and he went down, spurting blood from the deep gash. Takahashi was attacked by another samurai at that moment, and by the time he had run him through, the wounded fighter was screaming in agony. Takahashi, feeling a touch of contempt for the man – samurai were not supposed to react to pain, no matter how bad it was – cut his head off, and wiped his blade clean on the sleeve of his foe’s kimono. It was a gesture of scorn: the garments of an enemy who died bravely were not treated like cleaning rags.
He and Fumiko were very happy together, and in time she became pregnant. The midwife said the baby would be a boy, because Fumiko was carrying it low. But she also said it would be a difficult birth: the boy’s head was large, and Fumiko’s hips were narrow. Her prediction proved all too true. Fumiko was in labor from dawn to dusk, and the screams she couldn’t hold back reached Takahashi, who had been banished to the rock garden. At last the midwife appeared, her bare arms bloody to the elbows, and prostrated herself in front of him. “Takahashi-sana, forgive this miserable person,” she said, in a voice thickened with grief, “but I could not save your wife. And your son was still-born.” It took all of Takahashi’s training to hold back the animal howl that rose in his throat, and the effort made beads of sweat appear on his brow.
“Rise, rise,” he managed to say. “You have done your best, I am sure. Nobody can stop the shinigami when they come to lead us to the next world. I would like to see my wife and child.”
“It is against custom,” the midwife protested. Takahashi’s self-control broke. He sprang to his feet and shouted, “Do not prate to me of custom! I am master here, and you will do as I say!” The terrified midwife stood up and backed away, keeping her head bowed. She led him into the sleeping chamber. Fumiko lay naked on the futon, her head thrown back and a rictus of agony frozen on her lips. The dead baby had been placed next to her, wrapped in a sheet that was stained with blood and the fluids from its birthing sac. It was a monster. Its head was far too big for its wizened body, and it had the face of a demon, with slitted eyes, no nose at all, and a wide mouth that already showed the buds of teeth. At the fork of its crooked legs was a tiny, erect penis.
The pent-up howl escaped. He bellowed and raged, striking himself on the chest and lacerating his cheeks with his nails. The midwife ran out of the room. Takahashi went on roaring until he lost his voice. Exhausted, tears stinging the cuts on his cheeks, he knelt beside his dead wife and kissed her brow. But he could not bring himself to kiss his son. He ordered that Fumiko and the monster be cremated separately. The servants placed her ashes in a pearl-blossom urn and buried it in the family cemetery. But he himself disposed of the remains of the thing he had spawned. Using a trowel, he scraped the mixture of ash and bone fragments into a plain wooden box. He took the box to a bluff overlooking the sea, opened it, and spilled its contents out. The light breeze took them before they reached the surface of the water, and spun them into a small cloud that whirled once before dissipating. Now even the monster’s ghost was gone. He threw the box into the water, and the ebbing tide caught it. It floated out to sea for awhile, but finally filled up and sank.
Memories of Fumiko haunted his waking hours, and at night she came to him in dreams, dressed in white, as she had been on their wedding night. She never spoke, but she gazed at him sadly, as if he had abandoned her, instead of the other way around. He woke from those dreams weeping, and to go on living without her seemed a pointless burden. Early one morning he thrust his sheathed wakisashi into the sash of his kimono, and left his barren bedchamber, determined to die with dignity. He walked back to the bluff and sat down. If he performed the act of seppuku properly, he would collapse forward and fall into the sea. He drew aside the flap of his kimono, exposing his belly, and drew the sword.
But he didn’t use it. The rising sun cleared the horizon, and still he sat. Songbirds began to make music in the forest, and black-backed gulls cried and keened, circling above the water, waiting for the turn of the tide and the herring run. He saw a fisherman in a skiff getting ready to cast his net, and he remembered rowing out as a boy with Atsuji, his father’s retainer, who supplied the household with fresh fish every morning. Atsuji taught him to thank the herring and sardines they hauled into the boat. “They die so that we can live,” the old man said. “They must be honored.”
That memory touched off a flood of others about his family and the other people he grew up with. His father, Hideo, stern but always fair, had begun teaching him how to fight with swords almost as soon as he could walk. They fenced with bamboo kendo weapons, and Takahashi wore a child-sized masked helmet and padded knee-length jacket, but Hideo struck him hard if he didn’t parry correctly, and the blows hurt. He had no mother to run to, for Hideo’s wife Kazumi had died bearing him, just as Fumiko had died trying rid herself of the monster. He remembered the day his father told him why he had no mother. He spoke without emotion, and his face had been expressionless, but tears ran steadily down his cheeks.
When Takahashi reached sixteen, Hideo taught him the art of iaido, which sharpened one’s sense of living in the moment. Sitting on the floor, with his sheathed katana in the waistband of his kimono, Takahashi stayed motionless until his father shouted to warn him of the presence of an attacker. Then he would draw his sword and perform a series of katas with it, first from the sitting position, then on one knee, and finally standing. Hideo told him to imagine the attacker swinging his own sword at him, parry his blows, and counterattack. If Takahashi was hesitant or slow, his father would yell, “No! Your enemy has killed you! Again!” Over hours and days of practise, Takahashi came to visualize his opponent clearly: a tall samurai with his father’s lean face, but a snarling expression that Hideo had never shown to his son. The boy even named his foe, calling him Akechi, after one of Oda’s generals, who was known for his cruelty. Takahashi never told his father about naming his imaginary adversary, but Hideo noticed a change in his son’s technique. “Better,” he said. High praise, coming from him.
Hideo was killed by an archer at the battle of Sekigahara, and Takahashi was raised by his father’s younger brother. Uncle Shin perfected Takahashi’s fighting skills by teaching him horsemanship and how to use a lance while at full gallop.
When Takahashi came of age, he inherited his father’s fortified manor and extensive lands. The wars continued, and he fought with distinction, earning praise from Oda himself. During periods of truce, he made improvements to the manor and the fields, always taking the advice of the stewards and the older farmers. The crops of rice and millet flourished, and in time Tahahashi accumulated a modest fortune, which he spent primarily on shoring up the ancient manor and expanding its holdings. He freed his serfs and began paying them wages for their work in the fields, even giving them small garden plots so that they could grow their own vegetables. The neighboring landowners were scandalized, at first, but when they saw that paid freeholders worked harder than serfs, some of them followed his example.
His workers and the members of his household staff regarded him as a kind master, and his neighbors respected him, even though he was younger than they were. When he married Fumiko, the wedding ceremonies lasted for three days, and were attended by every notable family in the district. Uncle Shin got gloriously drunk on sake every evening, and sang songs in praise of the bride and groom that verged on the bawdy. But none of the guests objected, for they were just as red-faced and merry as he was. Everyone gorged on the food prepared by Uncle Shin’s cook, and another chef was brought in from Kyoto to provide a special sashimi made with fugu, the fish that is deadly unless its toxic liver and gall bladder are meticulously removed. Takahashi was impressed: eating fugu, no matter how carefully prepared, was a flirtation with death, which is why samurai preferred it above all other fish.
And death itself was nothing but the absence of life, unless one believed in the shadow world where ghosts waited to be clothed again in flesh, only to die again when their new time was up. He could think of nothing more inane, unless it was the faith of the Christians, who believed that their god had arranged his own death – committed seppuku, in a way – and come back to life. Christianity was proscribed in Nihon, and rightly so, in Takahashi’s opinion. Its priests rejected the pulsing vibrancy of this world for a pallid afterlife where there was nothing to do but sing the praises of their suicidal god.
Morning gave way to afternoon, and still he sat on the bluff, thinking hard If he killed himself, it would cause confusion and hardship among those who depended on him, from the lowest kitchen maid up to and including Uncle Shin and his family, for Uncle Shin, as a second son, had no money or land of his own. He tried to count up the number of people for whom he was responsible, and gave up after he reached a hundred. Was it any part of honor to abandon them? Many samurai, he knew, would say that the lives of peasants and servants were unimportant. But on the other hand, samurai were pledged to defend the weak, a pledge too many of them broke in the heat of battle. Early in his service with Odo, Takahashi himself had killed an old rice farmer who had grabbed at his horse’s bridle as he galloped into what must have been the man’s paddy.
That had been an occasion for shame, not honor, and he had regretted it the moment it happened. It was too bad real combat wasn’t more like the way noh drama depicted it: stately, slow, and simple, to the accompaniment of music, not screams. But the samurai in noh plays were actors reciting the lines of ancient stories. Who writes the story of my life? Takahashi wondered, and barked a laugh, for he was back at god, or the gods, again. Gods and ghosts, wisps and dreams.
“I write it myself,” he said aloud. His voice came out a croak, and he emerged from the haunted corridors of his mind to realize that it was getting on for evening. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since early morning, and he was thirsty and hungry. He returned his wakisashi to its sheath and stood up stiffly. A crow standing nearby, no doubt hoping he was dead, crawked harshly and leapt into the sky with a rattle of its wings. Crows were supposed to be omens, but in this instance Takahashi decided the bird wasn’t a harbinger of anything. It was just hungry.
It took some time to settle his affairs. He appointed Uncle Shin custodian of the manor and estate, giving him full authority to make such changes as he thought might benefit the holding and its people. Shin had a son, Ichiro, who was fifteen and immersed in his samurai training. Takahashi gave his swords to his young cousin, who tried to refuse them at first, saying that he was not worthy of such weapons. “Then you must become worthy of them,” Takahashi said, and stalked away without another word. He had thought that parting with the katana and the wakisashi would be painful, for they had been part of his identity ever since his father had passed them down to him. Instead, he felt relief, as if he had laid aside a burden whose weight he had never noticed until it was gone.
He bestowed small gifts of money upon the household servants and gave Uncle Shin all his fine clothing to dispose of as he saw fit. Along with some food, he put a pair of chopsticks, a flint and steel for making fires, a brass pot and pan, a plain brown kimono, a spare pair of zoris, a rain cape, and an extra breechclout into his straw backpack. Wearing an equally plain kimono, this one blue, he tied a purse containing a small store of coins to his belt, and set off on foot for Kennin-ji. He carried a stout length of bamboo to serve as a staff, or if necessary, a weapon.
The walk to the monastery took three days. He paced himself, walking barefoot until the road grew rocky, and then putting on his single pair of geta, which had already been a bit worn before his departure. The people he met on the way – farmers driving oxcarts, peddlers with their wares in packs similar to his own, young peasant mothers carrying their babies strapped to their backs as they walked to small market towns – paid little attention to him. He spent the first night at a small inn whose proprietor, recognizing him as a samurai despite his shaven head and lack of weapons, respected his privacy and kept his conversation to the minimum necessary to take his orders, serve his food, and show him to his room.
But even that much talk was too much for Takahashi, and he spent the second night in the woods that bordered the west side of the road. It started to rain, so he used his staff as a pole to turn his cape into a sort of tent, and slept sitting up with his back against a tree. Next morning he set off again. The road grew steeper, and the farmland gave way to an upland pasture where a small flock of sheep grazed, watched over by a boy of about ten who carried a crook that was taller than he was. The boy must have taken him for a renegade ronin who posed a threat to his animals, for he took his crook in both hands, brandishing it in a way that showed he knew something about stick-fighting. Takahashi assured him that he meant no harm. The boy relaxed, and the two of them settled down around a little campfire that Takahashi kindled with his flint and steel. The boy had some ewe’s cheese, and Takahashi contributed rice cakes and dried fish. Their water came from a small stream that flowed from a pool at the base of a nearby escarpment, and Takahashi filled his pot and boiled the fish until it was soft enough to eat. He used his chopsticks, but the boy ate with his hands. There was something savage about him: he seldom spoke, and when he did it was in monosyllables. In place of a kimono, he wore a sheepskin wrapped around his skinny body, and it stank, as if it hadn’t been properly tanned. As soon as he had gobbled down his share of the food, he uttered a series of odd blatting noises, and the sheep looked up from their grazing and trotted to him, crowding around as if he were their ram. He counted them carefully, clucked his satisfaction, and dispersed them by clapping his hands together sharply.
“You’re more a sheep than a boy, aren’t you?” Takahashi said. The boy gave him a measured look, suggesting that he understood more than he was letting on, and said, “I’m not a sheep. I guard the sheep. Now it’s your turn.” He turned his back, lay down, and fell promptly asleep. Takahashi chuckled. Fumiko might have been pleased to see her haughty samurai husband taking orders from a peasant boy, for she had set little store by pride.
For the next few hours he kept watch, making sure the flock didn’t stray too far away. A full moon rose, and from halfway down the escarpment a pack of jackals began to yip and howl. But they weren’t just singing to the moon. The boy woke immediately, grabbing his crook, but Takahashi had already started running toward the attackers, keeping silent so as not to lose the element of surprise. He swung his staff at the lead jackal, hitting him on the head so hard he could hear the crack of breaking bone. The animal uttered a strangled whine and went down. In an instant the rest of the pack was on him, growling and snarling as they ripped him to pieces. Then they fell to fighting over the pieces, and Takahashi walked back down the slope.
The boy gave him another of his large looks and said, “Thank you.”
“Nothing to thank me for. I just did what you told me to do.”
“Thank you for doing it, then,” said the boy, and his lips curled into something halfway between a smile and a snarl.
“So you can talk, after all,” Takahashi said.
“Of course I can talk. But only when I have something to say.”
“Very wise.”
“Where are you going?”
“There is a monastery called Kennin-ji. Do you know it?
“Yes. My family sells cheese and wool to the monks. Go up to the top of the scarp and you’ll see its gate. Are you going to be a monk?”
“If they’ll have me,” Takahashi said.
“Me, I wouldn’t want to be a monk. They aren’t allowed to fuck women.”
“Have you ever fucked a woman?”
“Not yet, but I want to. That’s why I don’t want to be a monk.”
Takahashi suppressed a laugh. The boy’s tone was serious, and he didn’t want to mock him. “I hope you meet a beautiful woman soon,” he said.
“Me too. Otherwise, I’ll have to start fucking sheep.”
The laugh came out. “That doesn’t sound like much fun. For you or the sheep.”
“Oh, I don’t think the sheep would care,” said the boy. “Sheep are very stupid. They get fussed over nothing, and it’s hard to make them do what you want. We had a dog who helped. His name was Yuudai. He could understand everything I said, and he’d round the sheep up when they scattered and drive them down the hill when it was time for shearing, and then drive them back up when shearing was over. He was wonderful.” The boy’s voice went a little ragged.
“What happened to him?” Takahashi asked.
“You did,” the boy spat. “You and your wars. A bunch of samurai came through our village last year, and Yuudai thought they were attacking the sheep, so he ran at one of them. The samurai cut him in half. Yuudai was a great hero, just like his name. The samurai was just a stupid, cruel pig. Are all samurai like that?”
“No, not all of us,” said Takahashi. “But some are. We are trained for war, and war is stupid and cruel. What kind of dog was Yuudai?”
“An akita. He was big and strong, and he could be fierce when some stranger threatened the sheep. He didn’t have a dog family, so the sheep were his family.”
“Why don’t you get another dog?”
“We don’t have the money,” the boy said.
“How much does an akita cost?”
“Three yin. There’s a woman in the village whose bitch just whelped, and that’s what she’s asking for one of the litter.”
“Here’s four,” Takahashi said, taking the bronze coins out of his purse and handing them to the boy. “Get the biggest and strongest pup.”
The boy stared at him. “Why are you being so kind to me?” he asked.
“Because you are a brave boy whose dog was killed by a cowardly samurai.”
“What is your name?”
“Takahashi Watanabe.”
“I will call my dog Taka,” the boy said.
“I am honored,” Takahashi said, and gave to boy a formal bow of respect. The boy returned it. “Now you must tell me your name, so that we can be friends.”
“I am Michio, but I don’t have a last name, because I’m not a nobleman.” They exchanged bows again.
“You are well-named, Michio, for I can tell you are on a righteous path. As for me, I have been lost in the past, but I hope to find my way at Kennin-ji.”
“You’re not lost any more,” Michio said. “Go to the top of the hill, like I said. You can’t miss the monastery. It’s the biggest building up there.”
“Thank you, Michio-san. Perhaps I will see you again.”
“Of course you will. It’s shearing season soon, and then my mother and her friends will be spinning the wool into blankets and shawls to keep you monks warm when winter comes. I’ll bring you a shawl. You won’t have to pay for it, because we’re friends.”
“Farewell, then, Michio-san,” Takahashi said. “Bring Taka with you when you come.”
“I promise, Takahashi-sana,” said the boy.
But he never came. The following year the wars ended, and Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi restored peace to Nihon. But outlaw bands still roamed the countryside, and one of them attacked Michio’s village. The villagers tried to defend themselves, but the outlaws were armed with swords. They slaughtered the defenders and looted the village. The Shogun’s army defeated the outlaws and executed them, but, as Takahashi learned from Michio’s mother Kiyoshi three months later, Michio died fighting for the village. He had used his stick-fighting skills to knock the katana out of one of the attacker’s hands with his crook, and had grabbed the sword, wounding the outlaw before he was cut down.
Kiyoshi brought Taka to the monastery with her on a dirty rope leash. By then he was a half-grown pup, and his immense feet promised that he would be large even by akita standards by the time he was fully mature. Kiyoshi herself looked like a gaunt old woman. She was dressed in rags, and the hair escaping from her battered straw sun hat was white. But when Takahashi sat her down on the monastery’s porch and looked at her more closely, he saw that she was probably no more than thirty. She explained that her husband had died with her son, and the marauders had torched her home and stolen all the sheep.
“I ran away with Taka, so the bad men wouldn’t get him,” she said, in a child’s sing-song voice. Her eyes didn’t quite focus on Takahashi, and she had a strange smile. “Taka is a wonderful dog. He talks to me in my mind, you know. He told me all about the good samurai who knew my son. Only he’s not a samurai any more, he’s a monk. Do you know him, sir?”
Takahashi realized she was quite mad. “I know him very well, Kiyoshi-san. But you look exhausted, and you must be hungry. Come inside, and I’ll get you something to eat.”
“What about Taka?”
“Bring him. I’ll get him something, too.”
The pup was as filthy as Kiyoshi, but still plump, and in high spirits. He pulled the rope out of Kiyoshi’s hand and ran to Takahashi, wagging his tail furiously.
“Ah, you can’t fool Taka!” the woman cackled. “You’re the samurai! Takahashi Watanabe! Taka never forgets a name, or a face. And neither do I.”
Her laughter abruptly turned into wracking sobs that almost doubled her over.
“I have lost everything,” she gasped out, “and I can’t forget anything.”
“Come, mother,” Takahashi said, taking her by the hand and helping her to her feet. “I’ll take care of you.”
In the event, however, there was little either Takahashi or Abbot Yoshida could do for her. The abbot arranged for a nunnery at the end of the plateau to take her in, but her madness grew worse. She began flinging herself against the walls of the nunnery’s infirmary, and the abbess, fearing that she’d do herself an injury, had her bound hand and foot to the frame of her futon. She refused to eat or drink, and kept on struggling and wailing. After two days and nights, the cries stopped. An attendant nun came in and found that Kiyoshi’s torment was finally over.
Takahashi took the news of her death almost as hard as he’d taken the loss of her son. Michio was the son he’d never had, and Kiyoshi might have become a replacement for Kazumi, who had died bearing him. There was no way of retrieving Michio’s body, but he lit Kiyoshi’s funeral pyre himself, and saw to the interment of her ashes in the monastery’s little cemetery, on the other side of the torii gate. Then he went to his cell and sat down, with Taka sleeping in a corner, to practise do-nothing. When he hadn’t emerged after eight hours, Abbot Yoshida came in to see if he was still alive. He came slowly out of his meditative trance, smiled thinly at the abbot, and said, “I was just resting my eyes, Yoshida-sana.”
“I’m glad you can still open them,” said the abbot. “There is work to be done.”
“There always is,” Takahashi said, standing up. “May I keep the dog?”
“You have come here to give up your attachments, Takahashi,” said the abbot sternly.
“I understand that, Yoshida-sana. But will you allow the dog to stay at the monastery? He can belong to all of us. And he will grow up big and strong, which will be a good thing if we are attacked by bands of marauders.”
Taka walked over to the abbot and sat down at his feet, whining a little. Against his better judgment, Abbot Yoshida patted his head and scratched him behind the ears. “Very well. But what about his food? I assume he eats meat.”
“We don’t, and most of us used to be meat-eaters like him,” Takahashi said. “So I think he’ll do all right with soybeans, lentils, rice, and eggs.”
The abbot laughed. “I have never heard of a Zen dog,” he said.
“Oh, all dogs are farther along the way to enlightenment than people are, Yoshida-sana. It’s because they can’t talk.”
“Very true. Speaking of talking, it’s time to shut up and get back to work.”
Takahashi bowed and followed the abbot outside, with the akita pup following behind them. Yoshida motioned him to join a group of monks who were picking soybeans and shelling them into a bucket. It was repetitive work, not too hard, not too easy, and he fell into the rhythm of it. He flipped Taka a couple of beans, and the pup gobbled them down eagerly. The other monks began to flip beans to him from time to time, and any lingering concerns Takahashi had about the dog’s food were allayed. If he liked raw soybeans, he’d like boiled rice, lentils, and eggs.
And so the akita became a Zen monk. He grew into his enormous feet, and by the age of three he stood as high as Takahashi’s waist. He was quiet by nature, hardly ever barking unless he heard or smelled something or someone who didn’t belong at the monastery. Once he chased away a couple of jackals who were after the chickens, and some time later he roused all the monks in the middle of the night with a series of deep, deafening barks that sounded like samurai war-cries. A group of bandits armed with swords was approaching, but Aka’s murderous warnings stopped them in their tracks. Swords were prohibited at the monastery, but Abbot Yoshida kept several bows and a good supply of arrows, which he handed out to Takahashi and three other monks who had once been samurai. The bandits had crept up in the dark, but Aki’s rigid stance pointed out where they were, and every arrow found its mark. One marauder, shot in the stomach, was still alive, and Takahashi set the dog on him. Aka tore his throat out. But he didn’t go any further, and when Takahashi called him, he came and sat down as if nothing in particular had happened.
The monks didn’t honor the dead bandits with cremation. They left the bodies lying for crows to peck at until dawn, and then they heaped the remains into a hand-cart and wheeled them to the edge of the forest, where they dug a shallow mass grave, tumbled them in like so much carrion, and shoveled dirt over them. The jackals would have no trouble digging them up and stripping their flesh, and their bones and skulls would lie around for awhile as a warning to future marauders, until the grass grew over them. The monastery was never attacked again.
On the morning when Takahashi found the black stone, the fight with the marauders was ten years past almost to the day, and Taka’s muzzle was beginning to gray, though he didn’t seem to feel his advancing years as much as Takahashi did. He sat alertly just outside the rock garden, watching his master – for although he was the monastery’s dog, everyone knew that in his own mind he belonged to Takahashi. The tall monk walked over to him ad showed him the black stone. “What do you make of this, Taka?”
The dog sniffed the stone, paused, and sniffed it again. Then he raised his head and gave Takahashi exactly the same measuring look Michio used to level at him when he thought his friend was being silly.
“Yes, I know, it’s just a stone,” Takahashi said. “But look at the garden. All the other stones are white. How did a black one end up among them?”
Taka wrinkled his brow and whined, upset that his master was asking him something he didn’t understand. Takahashi ruffled the fur on top of his head and smoothed it out. “I’m sorry, old friend, I was just talking to myself. Bad habit for an old man. People think you’re losing your mind. Lucky thing you’re the only one who can hear me.”
He rolled the stone around in his palm again, enjoying once more how smooth and heavy it was. He knew it was obsidian, because the sashimi chef who had prepared the fuku at his wedding celebration used a knife with an obsidian blade that never grew dull. And obsidian was hardened volcanic lava. On a clear day, he could see Fujiyama from the terrace of the monastery, sometimes with a narrow banner of white smoke curling out from its summit. The volcano had been quiet for a long time, but it must have erupted violently some time in the past, spewing lava high into the air above Kyoto. The black rock in his hand had been forged in the mountain’s fiery furnace and blown all the way to Kennin-ji. Its journey reminded him of the course of his own life: born during a time of extreme turmoil, he had been hardened and sharpened into an instrument of violence, until the strife had ended and he had wound up at the monastery.
He thought of keeping the stone to use as a meditation aid. But it didn’t belong to him. He paused for a moment, and replaced it exactly where he had found it. After the midday meal, he went to the abbot and asked for a brush, a sheet of washi paper, and ink. “Do you plan to write a letter?” the abbot asked.
“No, Yoshida-sana. I want to write a haiku about a stone.”
“That sounds like a koan.”
“Perhaps it will turn out that way.”
“I look forward to reading it, Takahashi-san,” said the abbot.
Takahashi bowed and returned to his cell. After a few minutes, a young monk arrived with the writing materials. Takahashi thanked him and laid them out on his low table. The poem had already materialized in his mind, and all he had to do was copy it.
Black stone born in fire,
Long journey through heaven’s storms
To final stillness.