He could hear a stray dog barking. In the darkness of a country at war with itself, it seemed that the only thing that grew greater was the barking of dogs. Hiyoshi went outside.

"Well, I'm off." He could say nothing else, not even "take care of yourselves"—it stuck in his throat.

His mother bowed low in front of the shrine. Otsumi, holding the crying Kochiku came running out after him.

"Good-bye," Hiyoshi said. He did not look back. His figure got smaller and smaller until it disappeared from sight. Perhaps because of the frost, the night was very bright.

Koroku's Gun

A few miles from Kiyosu, less than ten miles west of Nagoya, was the village of Hachisuka. Upon entering the village, a hat-shaped hill was visible from almost any direction. In the thick summer groves at noon, only the song of the cicadas could be heard; at night the silhouettes of large bats on the wing swept across the face of the moon.

"Yo!"

"Yo!" came the reply, like an echo, from within the grove.

The moat that took its waters from the Kanie River passed around the cliffs and large trees on the hill. If you didn't look closely, you probably wouldn't notice that the water was full of the dark blue-green algae found in old natural ponds. The algae clung to the weathered stone ramparts and earthen walls that had protected the land for a hundred years, and, along with it, the descendants of the lords of the area, and their power and livelihood.

From the outside, it was almost impossible to guess how many thousands or even tens of thousands of acres of residential land were on the hill. The mansion belonged to a powerful provincial clan of the village of Hachisuka, and its lords had gone under the childhood name of Koroku for many generations. The incumbent lord was called Hachisuka Koroku.

"Yooo! Open the gate!" The voices of four or five men came from beyond the moat. One of them was Koroku.

If the truth were known, neither Koroku nor his forebears possessed the pedigree they boasted of, nor had they held rights to the land and its administration. They were a powerful provincial clan, but nothing more. Though Koroku was known as a lord, and these men as his retainers, there was, in fact, something rough and ready about this household. A certain intimacy was natural between the head of a household and his

retainers, but Koroku's relationship with his men was more like that which existed between a gang boss and his henchmen.

"What's he doing?" Koroku muttered.

"Gatekeeper, what's keeping you?" yelled a retainer, not for the first time.

"Yooo!"

This time, they heard the gatekeeper's response, and the wooden gate opened with  a thud.

"Who is it?" They were challenged from the left and right by men carrying metal lamps shaped like bells on stalks, which could be carried on the battlefield or in the rain.

"It's Koroku," he answered, bathed in the lamplight.

"Welcome home."

The men identified themselves as they passed through the gate.

"Inada Oinosuke."

"Aoyama Shinshichi."

"Nagai Hannojo."

"Matsubara Takumi."

They proceeded with heavy footsteps down a wide, dark corridor and into the interior of the house. All along the corridor, the faces of servants, the women of the hous hold, wives and children—the many individuals who made up this extended family-greeted the chief of the clan, come back from the outside world. Koroku returned the greetings, giving each at least a glance, and arriving at the main hall, he sat down heavily on a round straw mat. The light from a small lamp clearly showed the lines on his face. Was he in a bad mood? wondered the women anxiously, while they brought water, tea and black bean cakes.

"Oinosuke?" Koroku said after a while, turning to the retainer sitting farthest away from him. "We were well shamed this evening, were we not?"

"We were," Oinosuke agreed.

The four men sitting with Koroku looked bitter. Koroku seemed to have no outlet for his bad mood. "Takumi, Hannojo. What do you think?"

"About what?"

"This evening's embarrassment! Wasn't the name of the Hachisuka clan shamefully blackened?"

The four men withdrew into a deep silence. The night was sultry, with no hint of a breeze. The smoke from the mosquito-repellent incense drifted into their eyes.

Earlier that day, Koroku had received an invitation from an important Oda retainer to attend a tea ceremony. He had never had a taste for such things, but the guests would all be prominent people in Owari, and it would be a good chance to meet them. If he had turned down the invitation, he would have been ridiculed. People would have said, "How pretentious they are, putting on airs. Why, he's nothing more than the leader of a gang of ronin. He was probably afraid to show his ignorance of the tea ceremony."

Koroku and four of his followers had gone to the affair in a very dignified manner. During the tea ceremony, an akae water pitcher had caught the eye of one of the guests and in the course of the conversation, a comment had slipped carelessly from his lips.

"How odd," he said. "I'm sure I've seen this pitcher at the house of Sutejiro, the pottery merchant. Isn't it the famous piece of akae ware that was stolen by bandits?"

The host, who was inordinately fond of the pitcher, was naturally shocked. "That's absurd! I only recentiy bought this from a shop in Sakai for nearly one thousand pieces of gold!" He even went so far as to show a receipt.

"Well," the guest persisted, "the thieves must have sold it to a Sakai dealer, and through one transaction after another it finally came to your honored house. The man who broke into the pottery merchant's house was Watanabe Tenzo of Mikuriya. There is no doubt about that."

A chill went through the assembled guests. Clearly the man who spoke so freely knew nothing about the family tree of his fellow guest, Hachisuka Koroku. But the master of the house and quite a number of the other guests were well aware that Watanabe Tenzo was Koroku's nephew and one of his chief allies. Before he left that day, Koroku swore to investigate the matter fully. Koroku had felt himself dishonored, and had returned home angry and ashamed. None of his dejected kinsmen could come up with a plan. If it had been a matter involving their own families or retainers, they could have dealt with it, but the incident revolved around Tenzo, who was Koroku's nephew. Tenzo's household in Mikuriya was an offshoot of this one in Hachisuka, and he always had twenty to thirty ronin in residence.

Koroku was even angrier because he was related to Tenzo. "This is outrageous," he growled, feeling contempt for Tenzo's evil ways. "I've been stupid, ignoring Tenzo's recent behavior. He's taken to dressing up in fine clothes and keeping a number of women. He's brought the family name into disrepute. We'll have to get rid of him. As it is, the Hachisuka clan will be seen to be no different from a band of thieves or a bunch of shameless ronin. A sad state of affairs for a family that is usually regarded as one of the leading provincial clans. Even I, Hachisuka Koroku, hear in public that I am the leader of bandits."

Hannojo and Oinosuke looked down at the ground, embarrassed at suddenly seeing tears of grief in Koroku's eyes.

"Listen, all of you!" Koroku looked directly at his men. "The roof tiles of this man­sion bear the crest of the manji cross. Although it is now covered with moss, the crest has been passed down from the time of my distant ancestor, Lord Minamoto Yorimasa, to whom it was awarded by Prince Takakura for raising an army loyal to him. Our family once served the shoguns, but from the time of Hachisuka Taro, we lost our influence. So now we are merely another provincial clan. Surely we're not going to rot away in the country and do nothing about it. No, I, Hachisuka Koroku, have vowed that the time has come! I have been waiting for the day when I might restore our family name and show the world a thing or two."