Chapter 2
Texada Island
Texada Island was long and narrow, running from northwest to southeast. Isamu’s exploration party had, moving east from Camp Double Six, discovered two freshwater lakes, which they called Marsh Berry Lake and Rattling Bird Lake, and a creek that ran from Marsh Berry Lake to Sandy Bottom Bay.
Quarry One, above Iron Landing, was the site of the first iron discovery, and there was now a large pile of ore collected there by Saichi’s miners. While nothing could be done with it now, Isamu was confident that it would be put to use. Japan was iron-poor; its iron was either laboriously extracted from iron sands in the province of Chugoku, or imported from China. Texada’s iron ore could be shipped back to Japan on returning colony ships. Or, with the right craftsmen, it could be made into ironware here, saving the local kirishitan colonists and the Monterey Bay colony the expense and trouble of importing it from home.
Camp Double Six, a little east of Quarry One, was situated on a natural bastion, a broad ledge of stone. Before the Ieyasu Maru left Texada, its crew had helped Isamu’s party put it into a reasonably habitable form. They had cleared away trees and brush, and built a defensive wall, part boulders, part logs, with some stakes facing outward.
Inside this enclosure were several wooden buildings. The main building was nothing like a traditional Japanese house. The floor was not covered with tatami mats, and the walls weren’t sliding panels of wood or of translucent paper in a wooden frame. Under the direction of the ship’s carpenter, the crew had erected structures more like the mountain huts used by hunters—simple wood frames covered with brush.
Spare sailcloth divided the inside of the main building into sections: a small headquarters for Isamu, a dining hall, sleeping quarters, and a storage room. The dining hall was only sparsely furnished, but there was a low table, made of local wood, cedar bark mats to sit on, and a fireplace in the center. Various provisions were hung over it, to be dried and preserved by the heat and smoke.
There were no fireplaces in the sleeping quarters, but they did have anka, small charcoal burners to heat the feet or the bedding.
The storage rooms held the supplies that the Ieyasu Maru could spare: some arrows and musket bullets, some tools and weapons, miscellaneous trade goods, and a starting supply of food and water. Fortunately, the party had been able to locate a spring nearby, and they had restocked their food stores with berries, smoked fish and other comestibles.
The kitchen was an outbuilding. But it wasn’t much more than an enclosed firepit, with a smoke hole in the roof. There were several large rain cisterns nearby, built of native wood, so in case of siege, they would not be dependent on the spring. And there was a small bathhouse, too.
Between the main building and the gate in the defensive wall was a flat, cleared area, the “Assembly Field,” where Isamu could address the entire exploration party.
After exploring the burnt Indian village near Sandy Bottom Bay, Isamu’s party returned to Camp Double Six. That evening, Isamu was still unsettled by the dispute with Masaru. If only Commander Yoritaki, his immediate superior on the Ieyasu Maru, had assigned him a different second-in-command! There were over a dozen other samurai on board the Ieyasu Maru, any of whom Isamu would have preferred to Masaru. And one of them was Isamu’s best friend, Terasaka Haru. But Isamu knew better than to protest.
Isamu came from a family that had been retainers to the Date family for decades. Isamu’s most famous kinsman, Oyamada Yorisada, had been in the Date rear guard at the Battle of Nakaniida in 1588 against the Osaki clan, and had fought to the death.
In contrast, like most of the other samurai on the Ieyasu Maru, Masaru was a former ronin, a masterless warrior, taken into Date Masamune’s service only a few months before the Ieyasu Maru left Sendai. Isamu did not hold this against Masaru—Isamu had many friends among the former ronin, and he knew that when the Tokugawa took power, they dispossessed many daimyo of their domains and thus turned their samurai into ronin—but he’d known from the beginning that Masaru was going to be a problem.
Despite Isamu’s heritage, Masaru had been resentful of Isamu’s appointment as leader of the exploration party. Isamu had heard from Fudenojo, the ship’s officer assigned to Isamu’s party, that after Isamu had publicly volunteered, Masaru had approached Tokubei and claimed to be a kakure kirishitan, a “hidden Christian.” This, Masaru had pointed out, would mean that he would have better relations with the kirishitan colonists when they arrived, and he would thus be the better choice for local commander.
Tokubei was nominally the first mate of the Ieyasu Maru, but that fact did not adequately convey Tokubei’s importance; he had traveled to China, Vietnam, Siam, and even, on a Dutch ship, to India, and hence had been Date Masamune’s envoy to the Indians of Vancouver Island.
As proof of his assertion, Masaru had shown Tokubei that his sword guard had a hidden cross design. And he had explained that he was from the town of Iyo, once the center of Christian missionary activity on the island of Shikoku.
However, Tokubei was multilingual. He had encouraged the other Japanese to learn Kwak’wala—to reduce the mission’s dependence on Jusuke and his fellow castaways—but Tokubei, Isamu and Saichi were among the few who made the effort while the ship was en route to Texada.
Whether because of Isamu’s family connections to the Date clan, or his efforts during the passage to Texada to learn Kwak’wala, he had been chosen over Masaru.
Unfortunately, Masaru’s arguments had been effective enough to put Masaru in a position to plague Isamu in the future. Hopefully, from now on he would accept his subordinate position with good grace. Hopefully.
There was no doubt that Isamu had taken a considerable economic risk by joining the samurai contingent on the Ieyasu Maru. When he was a child, as was customary, Isamu’s family had arranged for him to marry a samurai woman of another clan. But when her family learned that he was going to New Nippon in Date Masamune’s service, they had broken off the betrothal.
Now, his future marital prospects—and the benefits they would bring to his family and clan—would depend on how well he did in Date Masamune’s service. And, of course, he would now need Date Masamune’s approval, as well as that of his parents and clan elders, in order to marry. And with an ocean separating them, the negotiations were likely to be protracted and difficult.
Isamu decided that he needed a distraction from these dark thoughts. He turned to Yells-at-Bears, who was sitting with him and Dembei in the dining hall. They had been engrossed in a discussion of some translation issue, until Isamu interrupted them.
“So . . . you said earlier, ‘since Beaver stole fire.’ What did you mean by that?”
“It is an old tale of my people,” said Yells-at-Bears. “It had rained for many days, and all the fires on earth were put out. The earth animals sent a messenger, Eagle, to the sky animals, to ask them for more fire, but they refused. So the earth animals decided to steal it. But Eagle could not steal it by himself because the sky animals watched him too closely when he came to visit.
“So the earth animals fired arrows at the moon. Once one stuck in the moon, they fired another, that stuck in the notch of the first one, and then a third, that stuck in the notch of the second, and so on, until there was a bridge of arrows, arched like a rainbow, from the earth to the moon. Beaver climbed up the bridge of arrows.
“Once Beaver was safely up the bridge, and hidden behind a cloud, Eagle went into action. He flew about the sky village in a strange way, and the sky animals came out to see what he was up to. He led them further and further away from the sky village, and Beaver crept into the village. He filled a clamshell with glowing coals from the sky village’s campfire and ran toward the ladder of arrows. The sky people saw the glow from his clamshell and ran after him, but Eagle harried them, and Beaver made it to the ladder and slid down it. And then he swung his great tail and broke the ladder, so the sky people couldn’t come after him.”
Of course, in telling this to Isamu, Yells-at-Bears sometimes had to backtrack and say something more simply, or have Dembei explain her meaning in Japanese, but that was the gist of her story.
When she was done, Dembei added, “I heard a different version when I was a slave of the Nakomgilasala. That it was Deer that stole fire from the sky, and he did so by tying pinewood shavings to his tail, and then whisking it through the fire when he visited the Sky Village and danced around the campfire. They then realized what he was up to, but he gave a great leap and got away.”
“I heard that, too, from the Gwat’sinux, but they are both wrong,” Yells-at-Bears insisted.
“All right, but what I don’t understand is how did the fire get passed from Beaver, or Deer, to people?” said Isamu.
Yells-at-Bears explained that long ago, animals could be transformed into people, people into animals, and for that matter, animals and people could marry and have children of either kind.
Relationships were easier then, thought Isamu. But he just said good night, as did Dembei, leaving Yells-at-Bears alone in the dining room.
Yells-at-Bears’ thoughts turned to the unfortunate and mysterious residents of the burnt village. Were they the victims of raiders? Yells-at-Bears knew firsthand what that was like. As the raiders carried her off from her home, she could see the fires they had set where her own village had been.
At the time, the best she could hope for was that her parents had survived and would quickly ransom her. But they didn’t, and she became a slave, traded from one tribe to another.
How fortunate she was to have been purchased by the Japanese, when all hope of a better future had long been lost! They, especially Isamu, were far kinder to her than the Gwat’sinux had been. Indeed, they had told her that they did not keep slaves themselves and hence she was free so far as they were concerned.
In theory, she could return to her own people when her service with the Japanese was complete. The catch was that they would surely realize that she had been a slave. And even though she was the daughter of a chief, and thus once of noble status, even an ex-slave had only slave status. Unless the taint of slavery were removed, a difficult and expensive ritual undertaking. In her present circumstances that didn’t seem likely. At best, she could hope to be a concubine for a noble, or perhaps a secondary wife for a commoner.
Perhaps she would do better to live among the Japanese . . . permanently.
The next morning, Isamu called the entire party to the Assembly Field. Fallen leaves crunched under their feet as they formed a rough semicircle.
“Up to now, our focus has been on stocking up on food for the winter. But Indians may visit the island at any time. Maybe now, maybe not until spring. While we hope to avoid fighting, the Indians may have other ideas. I know that Masaru and I can fight, but I don’t know what martial skills the rest of you have. I need to see that firsthand, and we need to start training regularly. We will use this area for weapons practice each day.”
Masaru set up targets on one side of the assembly field, and the men who claimed to already know how to use a firearm were given the chance to prove their claims. Their firearms were all of Japanese make, and differed from the Portuguese arquebuses that the Japanese had initially copied. For one thing, they had waterproof covers to protect the matchlocks from rain. These were boxlike contraptions, made of waxed paper in a wood frame, which fitted around the touch hole. That was fortunate; this month had been wetter than the one before, and Yells-at-Bears had warned the Japanese that the next month would be even worse.
Fudenojo, the pointy-jawed ship’s officer, proved to be a good shot, as did several of the other sailors. But Saichi, his miners, and the two castaways had never even held a firearm. Of course, neither had Yells-at-Bears.
Captain Haruno had given the expedition what he considered to be an ample supply of shot and powder. But it needed to be husbanded, as they couldn’t expect resupply until the summer. Assuming either the Ieyasu Maru or the colonists actually showed up, that is.
“Masaru-san, please teach teppojutsu to our crew,” ordered Isamu.
“Very well, but we can’t afford to have novices waste our precious gunpowder. They will learn all thirty-two shooting positions, and just dry fire the guns, until I am absolutely satisfied.”
“Proceed as you suggest.”
The sailors and miners stood, muskets in hand. Masaru barked out one command after another. “Position Three! Kneel, resting the barrel on a stone. Separate your knees more . . .”
Bay, Luzon, Philippines
Father Blanco bowed his head as he entered the bamboo and nipa church of Bay. He gave thanks for the deliverance of the fishing boat from the storm, and prayed for the souls of his benefactors in San Miguel. Then he sought out the parish priest, an Augustinian.
“I am pleased to see you,” said Father Blanco. “I wasn’t sure whether the Japanese had made it this far into the interior.”
The Augustinian crossed himself. “Thank the Lord, they have not. But we are only a few hours’ sail from Fort Santiago, and I think it is only a matter of time. I will move into the mountains if they do.” He cocked his head. “What are your plans?”
“I will try to reach Cebu.”
“Not an easy journey, nor a safe one. I can find you a guide to take you to Tayabas, near the coast. Do you have money to pay for passage?”
“I do, thanks to the generosity of those who sheltered me after the fall of Manila.”
“It is well that you do, since the fare is likely to be high, to compensate for the risk. The Moro pirates have stepped up their raiding of the coastal barrios since the fall of Manila.”
Father Blanco fingered the stubble on his chin. “I will have to take my chances.”
Texada Island
At the general assembly in front of the main building, Isamu decreed that each day, those members of the party whose duties did not take them away from camp all day must spend an hour on weapons practice of some kind. And he chose to turn his attention to his men’s knowledge of kyujutsu—archery technique. Hardly any of the sailors were good archers. Fudenojo had told Isamu, apologetically, that it was much easier to teach a new sailor how to use a firearm than to use a bow, and so, once there were enough guns on board, little attention was given to archery. Indeed, while the Ieyasu Maru had given the exploration party enough guns and spears so everyone could have his own weapon, there were only enough bows for half the party.
“But we can’t just rely on guns,” Isamu had responded. “We can reuse arrows, or make new ones, and with Yells-at-Bears’ help in finding the right wood, we can make bows, but we have only so much shot and powder.”
Isamu chose to lead the lesson. While Masaru was the better archer of the two, he was not a good teacher. Isamu believed that it was because Masaru had learned archery so easily that he couldn’t understand the mistakes of others and explain how to correct them.
Isamu tried to put the best face possible on this decision. “There is no point in wasting the time of an expert like you on a bunch of neophytes, Masaru. I will get them started, and you can show than what a master can do another day.”
Masaru however, didn’t seem convinced of Isamu’s logic. Just for an instant, his lip tightened on one side of his face, indicating his displeasure.
Noting this, Isamu decided to divide the group in half, keeping one for himself for the archery lesson, and having Masaru take the other half to learn yarijutsu, the technique of the spear. Hopefully, keeping Masaru occupied would keep him from brooding on the slight to his kyujutsu teaching ability.
Both Isamu and Masaru had a daikyu, a “great bow,” about eight feet long and made of pieces of bamboo glued together. However, it was not a practical weapon if you wanted to walk through forest, and it wasn’t common equipment for a “red seal” ship, either. The men therefore had each been given the hankyu, the “half bow.”
The hankyu was a piece of bamboo about four feet long, gently curved in the center but straightening at the tips. “Hold it here, where the leather is wrapped around the bow, not in the center.” Isamu indicated the grip point to be about one-third of the bow length from the bottom.
“We string it like so.” Isamu demonstrated.
He dropped to a peculiar position, half-kneel, half-squat. His left leg was forward, bent so the knee and toes were on the ground. His right leg was open, the knee pointing to the right, and sharply bent, but off the floor. He took several arrows out of the quiver that hung from his back, and set them so the feathered ends rested against the inside of his right thigh.
“Copy me,” he said. “This is the first position, the kneel. It is one form of the stance, ashibumi. We use it in battle since you present a smaller target and have more stability.” He patted his stomach. “Breathe from here, slow and deep.”
He picked up his bow and planted the lower end beside his right leg, a few inches back of the knee. His bow hand was a little below his present shoulder level. “Pretend you have the bow in your left hand, like so.” Isamu reached for an arrow with his right hand, brought it up to chest height, and notched it on the bow string. “Second position, yugame.”
He pushed the bow hand forward as he raised it to level with the top of his forehead, arm straight. At the same time, he pulled the right hand a little back, and raised it, but not quite so much, so the arrow was inclined slightly upward. The elbow bent to a right angle, and pointed up and to the right. The arrow was drawn back half its length. “Third position, uchiokoshi.
He lowered both hands to mouth level, the bow hand moving in an arc with the arm still straight but relaxed, the right hand pulling the bow string back to a position a little further back than his ear, almost the full length of the arrow. “Fourth position, hikiwake.
“Sight on the target. If the target is close, as here, assume horizontal flight. Later we learn how to correct for distance.
“Now watch!” An instant later, Isamu released the arrow which flew toward the target, striking the center. “That was hanare, the separation of arrow and bow. That is the obvious part. But did you see what I did with my right hand?” Immediately after the release, he had flung his right arm straight back. “That was zanshin, the pause.
“Lastly . . . We complete the kata with yudaoshi, the ‘lowering.’” He brought the bow back to the starting position.
Isamu had them repeat the kata several times with pretend bows and arrows before allowing them to hold the real thing.
After they had each, one at a time, shot several times from the kneeling position, with Isamu watching and correcting, he told them how to shoot standing up. He set out a yadate stand to hold the arrows. “Later, you will learn how to draw the arrow from a quiver.”
Taking an arrow in his right hand, he spread his feet and looked over his left shoulder at the target. “Stand with your feet an arrow length apart, and turned out like so.”
Otherwise, the technique was the same as for kneeling fire. Again he had his students practice with imagined weapons first, and then with the real thing.
As he expected, the arrows mostly missed the target altogether. It was disappointing, but Isamu reminded himself of how many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours he had spent practicing archery.
In the meantime, Masaru was drilling the men on spear fighting. As there wasn’t room to do this on the assembly field when archery practice was also underway, he had taken them outside the enclosure to a convenient clearing. One well away from the trainee archers’ line of fire.
Most of the men already had some notion of how to use the yari; the sailors were trained to use them to repel boarders. Of course, their spears were short, just three to six feet long. The nagae yari traditionally used by foot soldiers on the battlefield were twelve to eighteen foot long pikes.
Those foot soldiers fought in close formation, so that they presented a wall of steel points against an approaching foe. But given the size of the Japanese expedition, in any action against the Indians, the sailors would be fighting in open formation, much as they did against pirates. So the short spear was better for them.
Once Masaru saw that the men weren’t novices, he let them use actual spears. The men first practiced their spear moves on a bag stuffed with leaves and hung from an overhanging tree. Then the blades were carefully removed from two of the spears and the men took turns sparring with each other.
After an hour, Isamu and Masaru swapped students, and each continued to teach the same weapons.
Yells-at-Bears did not participate in this day of weapon training, but she watched it carefully.
The next day, before the men were separated into groups, Yells-at-Bears whispered to Jusuke and, with him ready to translate if need be, went up to Isamu. “You need all the shooters you can get. Teach me, please.”
Isamu was a little taken aback. “It is true that samurai women learn to fight, but their weapon is the naginata, not the bow,” he told her.
“Why is that?”
“Because the naginata is a pole arm, it gives them greater reach.”
“Doesn’t the reach of the hankyu exceed that of the naginata?” asked Fudenojo, who was standing nearby. “And didn’t Tomoe Gozen use a bow?” Tomoe Gozen was a legendary female warrior who fought for Minamoto no Yoshinaka in the Genpei War, four centuries ago.
The conversation, by then, had attracted Masaru’s attention. “If her own people didn’t teach her how to use a bow, why should we?”
Masaru’s opposition provoked Isamu to decide in her favor.
“She’s right, we need everyone to be able to bear arms, and it is better that she fight from a distance, behind cover, than hand-to-hand.”
Once again, he divided the men into two groups, and sent one off with Masaru for spear practice in the usual place.
“Yells-at-Bears, did you pay attention during yesterday’s lesson?”
“I did, Oyamada-san.”
“We will start, as we did yesterday, with imaginary bow and arrow. Men, line up here!”
Once they had formed up, he added, “Yells-at-Bears, stand behind, so you can see what they do on each command. Try to do what they do.”
He repeated the drill from the day before, first for the kneeling position, then for standing. And then he had the men shoot, one by one.
“Your turn,” Isamu said, and handed the bow to Yells-at-Bears.
She drew an arrow from the stand and tried to match his shooting position.
“Feet farther apart. No, not that much.” Jusuke was adding a translation in Kwak’wala, in case she had trouble with Isamu’s Japanese. More surreptitiously, some of the spectators were placing bets.
“Fine, now the bow hand . . . easy up, yes . . . breathe deeply, in and out, from here, during the setup.” He patted his stomach. “Begin the lift . . . hold it. Make sure you keep breathing. Now push out the bow hand . . . good . . . complete the draw . . . lower! . . . Now hold your breath . . . release when ready. . . .”
The standard target for novices was an o-mato, sixty-two inches in diameter, set eighty-five feet away.
Yells-at-Bears loosed the arrow. It fell short of the target.
“Take a new arrow from the yadate stand, and try again. Here, let me help you with the stance.” Isamu came over and stood behind her, his front to her back. Once she had lowered the bow to shooting height, he put his left hand over hers. “A little higher,” he whispered. As she pulled her right hand back, he touched it. “You can pull a little farther. Good! Take the shot. . . .”
This time, she hit the target, albeit close to the rim. “Better. Try again. . . .”
When she had shot all of the arrows she had been offered, she bowed to him, and said, “Thank you, Oyamada-san, for allowing me to shoot.”
“Thank you, for volunteering.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You did better than some of the sailors, actually.”