Bundori: A Novel Of Japan

Chapter 5

Sano rode through a maze of narrow lanes that grew poorer and drabber as he neared Edo Jail, which housed not only prisoners awaiting trial, but also the morgue, where the bodies of those who died in natural disasters or from unnatural causes were taken. Here the spring sunlight only emphasized the signs of poverty, tumbledown houses with patched roofs and outdoor kitchens; thin, hungry-looking children. The warm weather intensified the smells of garbage, sewage, and poor food.

A rickety wooden bridge led Sano across the rank, stagnant canal that formed a moat around Edo Jail. Before him rose the ominous bulk of the Tokugawa prison, with its high stone walls, multiple watchtowers, and massive iron-banded gate. When he reached the end of the bridge, two guards came out of the guardhouse, bowed, and slid back the heavy wooden beams that barred the gate.

“Come right in, sōsakan-sama,” they chorused. Two months of his frequent visits had accustomed them to receiving him at this place of death and defilement where no one, especially high-ranking samurai, ever came voluntarily.

As he dismounted and led his horse in the gate and through the prison, Sano reflected upon the changes he’d undergone since his first trip to the jail. Then he’d come reluctantly, on a distasteful errand associated with his first murder investigation. He’d never imagined wanting to return.

Now he no longer needed anyone to escort him through the compound of earthen courtyards and dingy guards’ barracks and administrative offices. And he’d almost overcome his ingrained aversion, born of his Shinto religion, to contact with places of death. The proximity of the main prison building, where inmates suffered painful torture and squalid living conditions, and his fear of ritual pollution no longer made him physically ill. Nor did the smell of decay that surrounded the compound like a foul aura. Yet even when they still had, he’d come anyway-not out of professional duty, but to see Dr. Ito Genboku, Edo Morgue custodian, the friend whose scientific expertise had helped him prove that an apparent double suicide was actually a murder. Whose wisdom and kindness had aided his struggle with the conflict between duty and desire, conformity and self-expression.

Now Sano entered a final courtyard near the jail’s rear wall and stopped outside a low building with plaster walls and a thatched roof. The door opened at his knock and a short, wiry man with cropped gray hair and a square, stern face came out and knelt on the dirt to bow.

“Mura,” Sano greeted him.

He’d also overcome his distaste for this man, an eta. The eta, society’s outcasts, staffed the jail, acting as corpse handlers, janitors, jailers, torturers, and executioners. They also performed the city’s dirtiest tasks: emptying cesspools, collecting garbage, and clearing away dead bodies after floods, fires, and earthquakes. Their hereditary link with such death-related occupations as butchering and leather tanning rendered them spiritually contaminated. However, because Mura was both friend and assistant to Dr. Ito, Sano had learned to treat him with a respect not usually accorded an eta.

“Is the honorable doctor well, and able to receive visitors today?” he asked.

“As well as ever, master. And always glad to see you.”

“Then please secure my horse.” As the eta rose, Sano removed a flat package from his heavily laden saddlebag and tucked it under his arm, adding, “And unload these parcels.”

“Yes, master.” Mura’s deepset, intelligent eyes flashed Sano a look of understanding as he took the reins.

Sano walked to the door of the morgue, feeling a touch of the old apprehension. He never knew what he would find here. Gingerly crossing the threshold, he held his breath, then sighed in relief.

In the big room, other eta, dressed like Mura in short, unbleached muslin kimonos, worked at waist-high tables, tying hemp cords around corpses already swathed in white cotton, cleaning knives and razors and replacing them in cabinets, and mopping the floor’s wooden planks. The stone troughs that lined one wall stood empty, drained of the water used to wash the dead. All the windows were open, and the cool draft swept away any lingering odors. At a podium in one corner stood Dr. Ito, a man of about seventy, with short, thick white hair that receded at the temples. He wore his long dark blue coat, the physician’s traditional uniform. At Sano’s approach, he looked up from making notes in a ledger.

“Ah, Sano-san. Welcome.” His shrewd old eyes lit with pleasure, and his bony, ascetic face relaxed into a smile as he set down his brush. Walking across the room to meet Sano, Dr. Ito was a living illustration of Tokugawa policy.

Fifty years ago, the bakufu had virtually sealed off Japan from the outside world in order to stabilize the nation after years of civil war. Only the Dutch retained limited trading privileges. Foreign books were banned; anyone caught practicing foreign science faced harsh punishment.

But a few brave rangakusha like Dr. Ito-scholars of Dutch learning-continued to pursue forbidden knowledge in secret. In a blaze of scandal, Dr. Ito, once esteemed physician to the imperial family, had been discovered, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to lifelong custodianship of Edo Morgue. But this man of great spirit had found a source of consolation in his imprisonment. Ignored by the authorities, he could dissect, observe, and record in peace, with a neverending supply of human corpses at his disposal. He and Sano had begun their friendship over an inquiry related to Sano’s first murder investigation.

Sano bowed. “Greetings, Ito-san,” he said, extending his package. “Please accept this token of my friendship.”

Dr. Ito offered the customary thanks and demurrals and accepted the package, which contained writing supplies-the only things he would allow Sano to give him. The first and only time Sano had brought gifts of more substance, his friend had refused them, obviously humiliated to be an object of charity. Now Sano always gave food, fuel, and luxuries to Mura to sneak into the doctor’s hut, as he’d done today. All three of them knew about this, but to spare Dr. Ito’s pride, no one ever spoke of it.

“And what brings you here today?” Dr. Ito asked, fixing his piercing gaze upon Sano. “Somehow I sense that it is more than just a desire for congenial company.”

“The shogun has put me in charge of investigating the murder of Kaibara Tōju, whose head-”

“Was severed and made into a war trophy.” Dr. Ito’s face grew animated, and his glee seemed out of all proportion to the news. “Yes, I have heard of this murder. And you are to find the killer. Splendid!”

“Maybe not so splendid,” Sano said, puzzled. He explained about his difficulties with the police and how the murder scene had provided no clues.

But Dr. Ito, instead of offering sympathy or counsel, just gave him an enigmatic smile and said, “Perhaps you are worrying needlessly, and too soon.”

Suspicious, Sano asked, “Why? Do you know something?”

“Oh, perhaps. Perhaps.”

Sano would have demanded more information, but the mischievous look in Dr. Ito’s eyes stopped him. His friend had little enough pleasure in life; let him enjoy his secret a while longer.

“I’d like to examine Kaibara’s remains,” Sano said.

“Of course.” To the eta morgue attendants, Ito said, “Clear the tables. Then bring the body and head that came in this morning. Mura?” He turned to his assistant, who’d just entered the room. “Prepare to assist in an examination.”

Mura gave Sano a discreet nod: He’d hidden the gifts. Then he said, “Yes, master,” and went to a cabinet for the necessary tools.

The attendants removed the wrapped corpses and soon returned with two bundles, one large and elongated, the other smaller and squarish, both wrapped in rough hemp cloth. They placed these one on each table and withdrew, leaving Sano, Dr. Ito, and Mura alone.

“They’ve not been washed or prepared for cremation yet,” Dr. Ito warned.

“Good.” Sano nodded, pleased. Some evidence might remain. But as Mura unwrapped the bundles, Sano steeled himself, anticipating his first sight of the contents. He hoped his last meal had already passed through his system so that he couldn’t vomit, as he’d done after his first visit to the morgue. Since then he’d seen many corpses in various conditions, both here and in other, less expected places. But the thought of beholding another still made him queasy.

The last fold of cloth fell back. Sano swallowed hard. Blood caked the corpse’s clothes so heavily that he couldn’t make out their original colors. It stained the sheathed swords still tucked into the sash, and had coagulated in thick crusts around the cut neck. Sano forced himself to step closer, flinching when he caught the sweet, sickly, metallic odors of blood and decay.

“I suppose there’s no point in performing a dissection, because it’s obvious how he died,” Sano said, relieved to be spared that.

He would never forget the first dissection he’d seen, or the awful sense of uncleanliness he’d experienced while watching a human body cut, mutilated, defiled. But all horror and disgust aside, he had more reason for relief: Dissection was just as illegal as when Dr. Ito had been arrested. Sano doubted that even the shogun’s patronage would protect him from the consequences of dabbling in forbidden foreign science. Instead of seeing it as necessary to obeying his orders, the refined, devout Tokugawa Tsunayoshi might be offended enough to exile Sano, or at least decide he didn’t need a sōsakan of such dubious character. The thought of defying the law and jeopardizing his position terrified Sano. Yet, as in his first murder case, he would do both to satisfy his desire for the truth.

“No, a dissection does not appear necessary,” Dr. Ito agreed. He walked around the table, viewing the body from all angles. “But we shall see. Mura, remove the clothes.”

Dr. Ito, for all his unconventionality, followed the traditional practice of letting the eta handle the dead. Mura did all the physical work associated with Ito’s studies. Now he began to undress the corpse.

Sano examined the swords, holding them with his fingertips to avoid the blood. He pulled each free of its scabbard to expose a gleaming steel blade.

“Clean,” he said. “He didn’t even draw his weapons, let alone cut his attacker.” So much for the idea of identifying the killer via telltale sword wounds.

When Mura loosened Kaibara’s sash, a small brown cotton pouch fell onto the table. Sano picked it up. Protected by its concealed position beneath the sash, it was free of blood. A white jade netsuke-charm-in the form of a grasshopper sitting on a plum dangled from the drawstring. Sano opened the pouch and saw silver coins inside. That the killer had left behind Kaibara’s valuables eliminated robbery as a motive. And fortunately for Sano, thieving corpse handlers hadn’t braved the blood and gore to find them. He tucked the pouch and netsuke inside his own sash.

“I’ll return it to Kaibara’s family tomorrow,” he told Dr. Ito after explaining about Aoi’s ritual.

Mura removed Kaibara’s cloak, kimono, trousers, and under-kimono, leaving only the loincloth, which was stained with feces and urine: death had loosened Kaibara’s bowels and bladder. The clothing had absorbed much of the blood, leaving only the dreadful accretion at the neck and faint blotches on the rest of the body, which was small and frail, with the withered muscles and pale, papery skin of old age.

“Whatever reason the killer had for attacking Kaibara, it wasn’t for sport,” Sano commented. “The old man couldn’t have offered much of a challenge.”

“Turn him,” Dr. Ito said to Mura.

Sano leaned closer and voiced the obvious. “No cuts or bruises. Killed with one stroke. The murderer must have leapt out of the fog and surprised him.”

Ito was studying Kaibara’s neck. “Mura, clean the cut.”

Mura fetched a jug of water, then rinsed and swabbed until the caked blood loosened; the water washed reddish-brown clots down a hole in the table and through a bamboo pipe to a drain in the floor. The drain gurgled. Sano fought nausea as the cut came clean. He tried to think of the raw red tissue, white bone, and slashed vessels as mere abstract shapes, unrelated to anything human, but an unpleasant sense of contamination crept over him. Though he hadn’t touched the corpse, he felt an urgent need to wash his hands.

Dr. Ito must have noticed his discomfort, because he said, “Mura, cover the body.”

Having finished cleansing the wound, Mura brought a white cloth from the cabinet and draped the corpse, leaving only the area of interest exposed. Sano’s sickness abated. Not having to see the rest of the dead man made looking at the wound easier to bear.

“Thank you, Ito-san,” he said.

Dr. Ito bent close to the wound, squinting with a scientist’s concentration. “No jagged edges on the flesh, or roughness on the bone surface,” he said, pointing. “This cut was made with a very sharp blade, in a single motion-swift, sure, without hesitation. And with the necessary amount of force correctly judged. The killer knew exactly what he was doing.” His air of suppressed glee intensified.

“Then the killer is a skilled swordsman,” Sano said.

“It would appear so.”

Sano puffed out his breath in frustration. “Do you know how many men in Edo that description fits?” he asked, thinking of all the samurai who lived in the daimyo estates, and even the castle itself. In peacetime, many had little to do but practice their martial arts skills. “Or he could be a wandering rōnin.”

Oddly, Dr. Ito didn’t seem to share his disappointment. With a dry chuckle, he said, “Your task is a difficult one, but do not lose hope yet. Let us examine the head.”

They went to the other table, where Mura was unwrapping the smaller bundle. When Sano saw its contents, awe lifted him momentarily above his worries. He spoke on a sigh of mingled admiration and revulsion.

“A perfect specimen.”

He’d read accounts of the head-viewing ceremonies that followed battles. This bundori was correct to the last detail. The downcast eyes, the neat pigtail tied with white paper, the square mounting board, the rouged face, the odor of incense-all conformed to the standard specified in classic war manuals. Tokugawa Ieyasu himself would have been pleased to receive such a tribute.

“But this only confirms that the killer is a samurai who knows how to prepare a trophy,” Sano said. Morosely he touched the label tied to the pigtail. Then he frowned in surprise when he read the inked characters.

“ ‘Araki Yojiemon’?”

“I understand that war trophies are supposed to bear the dead man’s name,” Dr. Ito said. “Perhaps the killer did not know who Kaibara was, and chose another name rather than leave the label blank.”

“But why this particular one?”

Araki Yojiemon, Sano recalled, had been a vassal of Tokugawa Ieyasu during the country’s Sengoku Jidai-Time of War-more than a hundred years ago. The Araki clan had served the Tokugawa for generations, Yojiemon as a general in the battles Ieyasu had fought for Oda Nobunaga, during that great warlord’s drive to conquer the nation. Sano failed to see any connection between Araki Yojiemon and Kaibara Tōju’s murder.

“And if the killer didn’t know who Kaibara was, what would be his motive for murder?” Sano added. “Why kill a total stranger?”

Dr. Ito shrugged, sharing his bafflement. On a hunch, Sano detached the label and tucked it into his sash beside Kaibara’s pouch. He must determine what, if any, significance the label had, and could think of one possible way to do it.

“Have you any advice for me, Ito-san?” he asked.

This, evidently, was the moment the doctor had been waiting for. Beaming in triumph, he said, “What I have is important news for you. And if you make use of it, you may not need advice. Mura?”

He nodded to the eta, who took from a cupboard a large, covered brown ceramic urn. “Sano-san, it is my dubious pleasure to inform you that this unusual murder is not the first of its kind.”

“Not the first? What do you mean? How do you know?” Sano looked at his friend in confusion.

Dr. Ito only smiled and, with a wave of his hand, directed his attention to the eta.

Mura pushed the urn over to the table. With a sharp knife, he scraped off the wax that sealed the lid. He pried up the lid and set it aside. Then, grimacing in distaste, he plunged his hands into the urn’s depths.

Sano gasped when he saw the dripping object that Mura lifted onto the table. Sake, apparently used as a preservative, streamed from a severed male head. An opaque white film clouded the dead man’s eyes; his skin had turned grayish-white. In contrast, the prominent wart on his nose had darkened, and the lips had peeled back to expose yellow, overlapping teeth. His short black hair made only a skimpy pigtail.

“No label.” Sano spoke through a wave of nausea. “I wonder why not?”

But the head, like Kaibara’s, was mounted on a square board, and traces of rouge still adhered to its cheeks. This murder and Kaibara’s were unquestionably the work of the same person.

“When did this happen?” Sano demanded. “Do the police know about it?”

But of course they must. How like Hayashi to withhold information from him! Anger boiled inside Sano.

“The head was brought in by the corpse handlers ten days ago, at my request,” Dr. Ito said. “And I doubt very much whether the police were informed.”

“Why not?” Sano tore his gaze from the gruesome trophy and faced his friend.

Dr. Ito exchanged glances with Mura. “The victim was an eta,” he said.

“Oh. I see.” Enlightenment dispelled Sano’s confusion.

The authorities concerned themselves as little as possible with the outcasts; the police didn’t bother investigating their murders, no matter how unusual. But for Dr. Ito’s intellectual curiosity, the eta’s death would have gone disregarded, along with whatever information it could furnish about the killer. Sano felt a rush of gratitude toward his friend, whose assistance and inspiration grew more valuable to him as their relationship progressed.

“Thank you, Ito-san,” he said.

“Whatever are you talking about?” Dr. Ito feigned bewilderment, but a twinkle in his eye told Sano he understood and appreciated the tribute.

“Mura told me about the murder,” he continued. “The man lived in his settlement. Having an unrealistically high opinion of my expertise, he asked me to help find the killer. But unfortunately, there was nothing I could do except preserve the evidence. Unless… ”

He fixed Sano with a challenging gaze.

“Unless I help.” Sano thoughtfully studied the head. “Maybe I can. If the same person committed both murders, then maybe investigating this one will lead me to the killer.”

At Sano’s request, Mura clipped a lock of the murdered eta’s hair and wrapped it in paper for him to carry to Aoi. Then Sano took his leave of Dr. Ito, elated at the new possibilities that had opened up before him, but at the same time disturbed.

Kaibara’s decapitation wasn’t an isolated incident. The killer had already demonstrated his willingness to kill more than once, for purposes yet unknown, and the Tokugawa bakufu was not his only target.

There was a madman loose in Edo, and how many more lives were at stake?