Chapter 3 The Shogun’s Official Executioner “Executed is not the man himself, but the evil that dwells inside him.” --Samurai maxim Edo castle, the castle of the Shogun, towered over the nation, the supreme symbol of samurai society. The Tokugawa had laid the foundations of political domination. The castle had many moats, stone walls, and compounds. Each area could be reached by wooden bridges, which had gates at either end, and the entire castle ranged ten miles. Inside the south corridor of the castle, past the polished cedar floorboards that reflected the elaborate ceiling, stood the audience room of The Shogun’s Official Sword Examiner, the man responsible for the examination of the katanas given as gifts to the Shogun from the daimyo as a show of fealty. This man now sat in his audience room, a fold out veil with a painting of tree branches behind him. He wore a kimono with the wide shouldered vest, and the top of his head was shaved, with the top-knot lain down the center of his crown. Before him two samurai bowed, a young man and an old man, the younger two paces behind his elder, their heads low, their palms on the mat and their faces just above them. They wore kimonos with the wide shouldered vests over them, short-swords in their sashes. The elder samurai raised his head. He had a full head of grey hair, combed neatly back, with the top-knot. He kept his eyes closed. “Sir,” he said. “I renew my humble request. I have grown old. I beg that you name my son The Shogun’s Official Executioner.” The man straightened his posture. His face became troubled. “Yet the Shogun favors you,” he said. “Our Lord the Shogun says that none can match your Shinjitsu. Is your son up to it, Azaemon?” “Rather than hearing it from this old man,” said Azaemon, “I would be honored if you witnessed for yourself.” “Of course,” said The Shogun’s Official Sword Examiner. He glanced to the boy who still bowed with his head to the floor. “Takashi, was it?” “Sir!” exclaimed the boy. “Raise your head.” Takashi eased himself upward. He had a full head of black hair, combed back, pulled into a top-knot at the top. He had thick black eyebrows and his eyes were strangely innocent. He was twenty-three years of age. “Strong features,” said the man. “So be it. Tomorrow I will observe your sword arm at the prison grounds. Prove that you are indeed the third Takashi Azaemon!” “My Lord!” exclaimed the boy. The two samurai, father and son, took their leave from the audience room of The Shogun’s Official Sword Examiner, and returned to their own living quarters, a modest three section room of Edo castle. Outside, in the garden, a blanket of snow had fallen, and tuffs of snow swirled down from the night sky. “This snow will be gone come the morning,” Takashi senior said. “None fear a wolf without fangs. Nor do they fear a snow in the Spring.” “Yes, father,” said Takashi junior. They both sat on their knees in the main room of their estate. The father sat on a pedestal, slightly elevated, and his son sat on the ground, two paces behind his father. On the wall next to the father hung a scroll with a samurai maxim brushed on it in calligraphy. It was the Azaemon family maxim. It read: When both life and extinction perish, Nirvana will be bliss. In front of this scroll stood a stand where incense burned in a brass kettle. The smoke curled through the air. Next to the father set a sword stand, the Azaemon family katana placed there. This katana was a Muramasa katana, known as The Demon Sword, well known for the extraordinary sharpness of it edge, well known, too, for the legend that it drank blood, whispered to whoever wielded it to kill constantly, and it was said that once drawn, it must taste blood, even to the point of forcing the one who wields it to commit seppuku if no one could be found. It had also been named the 10,000 Cold Nights. Legend has it that Muramasa called his master, Masamune, the creator of the best katana in history, to see which of the two could make the better katana. They both toiled long and hard, and when both katanas were done, they tested them. They tested them by stabbing the blades into a stream, toward the current. The 10,000 Cold Nights, as it had first been named, cut everything that drifted toward it, fish, leaves, the very air. Masamune’s katana, The Stars of the Night Sky, cut nothing, not leaf, not air, and fish swam right up to it. A monk witnessed this, and he walked over and bowed to the two sword masters, and explained what he had seen. “The first of the swords was by all accounts a fine sword,” he had said in the legend. “However, it is a blood thirsty, evil blade, as it does not discriminate as to who or what it will cut. It may as well be cutting down butterflies as severing heads.” Thus any Muramasa katana became forever known as: The Demon Sword. These swords fell out of favor when the Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, took power, as he had lost many friends and relatives to them, and even cut himself badly with one. However, he appointed that his Official Executioner should wield such a blade, and the Demon Sword was gifted to them, and passed down by generations. Takashi Azaemon, The Shogun’s Official Executioner, the father of the man, sat upright with his eyes closed. He breathed in the smoking incense. “Takashi,” he said. “Sir,” said his son. “How old were you at your first sword testing?” “Ten, father.” “Yes. So you were.” His eyes were closed in reminiscence. “I had lied to the prison officials and told them that you were seventeen, so that they would let you do it. I recall that the sword was Izumi Kami’s Kiku-ichimonji. You shook badly, yet you sliced right through the chest cavity.” He opened his eyes. “When the days are warm, our skin takes on more fat, there is more resistance to the sword. Always keep in mind the season, and the make of the sword, before you cut.” “Yes, sir!” The father took up the family katana, The Demon Sword, by the scabbard, and held it in front of him. “I give to you this!” “The Demon Sword!” his son stammered. “For me?” “Of course! You are my heir.” Takashi Azaemon the third, son of Takashi Azaemon the second, bowed and accepted the katana with both hands. His father now for some reason was in a cold sweat, yet he spoke as though all were well. He said, “When you use this sword, your heart will reach out to those you cut. No matter how you harden your heart, no matter how you make yourself seem cold to the outside world, you will feel. Yes, you will feel. You will have compassion, and you will have a broken heart. That is what makes you Executioner, and you alone. The air is around us, and gives us life, and we hold the sword, and breath life into it. In my lifetime, sword testing on two hundred toros and heads. Three hundred executions. Honorable? No. The Way of the Warrior? No. The way of slaughter. Yet the answers to this lie in the next life.” His face strained. He hunched forward and let out a groan of pain. His son leaned forward, worried. “Father!” he said. “What is wrong?” His father grunted. Then he spoke. “The time has come to license you,” he said. He stood. “Come!” He stepped outside, into the garden blanketed by snow. His son followed him, wearing now the katana. His father stepped softly through the snow, then sat on his knees by the pond. His son knelt two paces beside him, facing him directly. He took the katana from his sash and set it beside him. “Takashi!” his father shouted. “Father!” shouted his son. “Kill me! Vertical slash!” “WHAT?” “Quickly! You have never tested on the living!” “Father?” “Tomorrow you are the third Azaemon!” his father yelled. “Everyday sword testing! Executions! You must learn that from me! “But--” “Do not hesitate! The bonds of this world are nothing to us, my son! You must serve! Do it! Now!” His father moaned in pain. By now the blood was visible against his kimono, thick and very dark. “Father!” screamed Takashi. “What have you done?” “I opened my stomach this morning, before you were awake. No one was aware. Strike now! You must!” His son begun to cry. He trembled violently. He gripped the handle of his katana. His hands shook as he drew it out. “I license you!” his father yelled. His son trembled and cried, but he positioned the handle in his hand. Yet he could not take the necessary stance. His father shouted, as he had shouted when this man had been a child. He shouted the directions of the vertical slash, and his son could not help but obey them without a thought, with no mind at all. “Shogyo!” his father screamed. Takashi Azaemon the third, son of Takashi Azaemon the second, raised the katana over head, then struck down upon his father’s head, and then the katana swept once more up. His father sat in the snow. His forehead split open from the top of the head through the eyes. Blood sprayed out into the night. “Perfection,” he said. He slammed forward dead, and his blood splashed against the white snow. His son dropped the katana and collapsed, screaming in pain, sobbing and trembling, for he had done what he must, and it had taken everything from him. Such is the Way of the Samurai. Takashi Azaemon. The third Azaemon. And the only tears of his life.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 12:15:30 +0000
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