The Fire-Setters

The 12th day of the 12th month, in the 2nd year of Bunkyu (1862). Late at night.

Gotenyama in Shinagawa was chilled to the bone.

Ito Shunsuke lay flat on his belly on the slope of withered grass, breathing on his numb fingers. His breath scattered white and melted at once into the dark.

Come spring, this hill would be buried in cherry blossoms. The townspeople of Edo would climb it carrying their tiered lunch boxes and pour each other sake while gazing down at the sea. That was the kind of place it was. And the shogunate had carved off this blossom-viewing hill for the foreigners. It had put up a fence, dug a moat, and built a British legation. The people of Edo clicked their tongues behind its back, but no one did more than that.

Tonight, 13 men had come to do more than that.

"...Shunsuke."

A low voice, right beside him. It was Inoue Monta. A man nearly 6 years older than Shunsuke and of a far better family, now pressing a mud-smeared cheek close to his.

"You're shaking."

"It's the cold."

"Is it."

Monta gave a short snort of a laugh. Against his chest he cradled a fire bomb: cotton soaked in oil, packed tight, with gunpowder worked in. They had made them that afternoon at an inn in Shinagawa.

Up the slope, a single shadow raised one hand. Takasugi Shinsaku. Beside him, the broad back of Kusaka Genzui.

It was the signal.

◇

The moat was shallower than they had expected. Water like ice came up to his knees, and Shunsuke clenched his teeth to keep from making a sound. Over the fence, then a dash through the shadows of the shrubbery.

The building stood right in front of them.

It was big. Big enough to tell even in the dark, and straight, without a warp anywhere. It was nearly finished, and no one lived in it yet. They had made sure of that.

They took a door off its frame at the back and went in.

It smelled of new wood. Mixed with it was a sharp smell of paint, something different from lacquer.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out the windows lined along the wall.

Shunsuke stopped short in spite of himself.

There was glass in the windows. Not paper screens. A single clear sheet, set flat into the whole of each window. When he touched it with a finger, it was cold as ice, and there was no ripple in it anywhere. Through it he could see the black expanse of the Shinagawa sea and a few fishing fires, not the least bit distorted.

(How do they make something like this?)

"Shunsuke, what are you doing?"

Monta's voice brought him back to himself.

A little way off, Yamao Yozo was crouching. He had his face close to a door hinge and was tracing something with his fingertip.

"Yozo-san."

"Look at this."

Yozo said it without turning around.

"The screws in this fitting. The way the threads are cut, every last one is the same. Not a hair's difference."

"Leave that for later."

Monta hissed at him.

"I know."

Yozo stood up. But Shunsuke saw it. Just before he rose, Yozo's fingers plucked out a screw that had worked half loose and dropped it into his sleeve.

◇

They took down the door panels, gathered the paper screens, and piled them up in the middle of the room. On top, Monta set the fire bomb.

No one spoke. Only the sound of his own heart seemed terribly loud.

The flint struck.

A small flame caught the edge of the cotton. For a moment it seemed nothing would happen. Then, with a low whump, the fire rose.

The fire ran astonishingly fast. It licked the stacked boards, crawled up the pillars, reached the brand-new ceiling. The smell of burning wood and the sweet smell of scorching paint came at them all at once.

"Fall back!"

Takasugi's voice rang out.

Shunsuke ran. Over the moat, over the fence, all but tumbling down the slope of withered grass. His back was hot. When he looked around, the summit of Gotenyama was dyed red, night sky and all.

◇

From the second floor of the inn in Shinagawa, the fire was plain to see.

The 13 threw the inn's windows wide and, still breathing hard, watched the hill go up in flames. Someone had sake brought. Takasugi laughed loudly and raised his cup high.

"Look at that, the foreigners' nest is burning. Maybe this'll wake up those cowards in the shogunate."

The laughter spread. They clapped each other on the shoulder, pointed at one another's sooty faces, and laughed again. Shunsuke laughed too. In his chest was a pleasure like something bursting open. They were not like the ones who only talked. They had really done it.

But as the cups went round, something else slowly surfaced from beneath that pleasure.

The feel of the cold glass.

Shunsuke put down his cup and went to the window. A little apart, Monta was looking out alone. He was not laughing like the others.

"Good fire, eh."

Monta said it quietly, to no one in particular.

"...Monta-san."

"What?"

"Did you see those windows?"

Monta didn't answer. After a while, he spoke in a low voice.

"I saw them."

The glow of the flames picked out Monta's profile in red.

"That house we burned. We couldn't build one like it."

Shunsuke nodded in silence.

"We've got timber. We've got carpenters. But we can't make that glass. We can't make those screws either. There's a country across the sea that makes them like it's nothing, and that country's ships are sitting off Shinagawa right now."

Monta lifted his cup to his lips, then lowered it without drinking.

"And we're planning to go to war with that country."

Downstairs, Takasugi's laughter burst out again.

Shunsuke felt he had to say something. But no words came. Cut down the foreigners, drive them out. He had never doubted that was right. It was not that he doubted it now. Only, he knew nothing at all about who it was they were supposed to be driving out. Tonight, for the first time, he realized it.

He remembered the day he had seen that ship off the Sagami coast.

It's got no sails up. How does it move?

He still had no answer to that question. And without an answer, he had set the fire.

"Don't think, Shunsuke."

Monta said it suddenly, in a bright voice, and slapped Shunsuke's shoulder.

"Tonight you drink. Thinking can start tomorrow."

Monta laughed as he said it, but Shunsuke had noticed that his eyes were not laughing at all.

◇

Before the dawn had fully broken, Shunsuke slipped out of the inn alone.

He had to see it one more time.

A crowd had already gathered at the foot of Gotenyama. Firemen in their short coats, townspeople with padded jackets thrown over their nightclothes, peddlers still shouldering their carrying poles. Everyone was craning their necks, looking up at the hill.

The legation was gone.

A few blackened pillars stuck up into the sky like bones. Thin white smoke still rose, and the smell of burning drifted down on the cold morning wind.

"Serves 'em right."

Someone in the crowd said it.

"Like we'd let the foreigners have our cherry hill."

A few laughed and a few nodded. Yet at the same time, he heard one old man mutter in a shaking voice.

"Doing a thing like this... what happens if the foreigners' warships come?"

Nobody answered that.

Shunsuke worked his way around the back of the crowd and got close to the edge of the burned ground. Slipping past the officials' eyes, he peered through a charred gap in the fence.

Something was glinting in the ash.

He reached out and picked it up.

It was a piece of glass. What was left of the window he had touched with his finger the night before. Melted by the heat, twisted, curled up like candy. What should have been clear had drunk in the soot and gone cloudy, and no longer reflected anything.

Shunsuke stood with it on his palm and could not move for a long time.

Burn it, and this is what you get. Something so flat, so cold, that showed even the distant fishing fires without a ripple: in one night, it becomes nothing but a lump.

Breaking things is easy.

And making them?

Did he want to be a man who could break this? Or a man who could make it?

No answer came. But the question, at least, no longer seemed likely to fade from the depths of his chest.

Shunsuke tucked the melted glass inside his kimono. Then he turned his back and lost himself in the crowd.

◇

Some days later. Yokohama.

Nomura Yakichi sat on a wooden crate stacked at the far end of the wharf, leafing through his English vocabulary book.

The winter sea was the color of lead, and offshore lay a number of foreign ships. Between the forest of masts, smoke from the funnels trailed thinly away.

Yakichi had been born into a Choshu samurai family and adopted into the Nomura house. From his teens he had learned the handling of Western ships in Nagasaki, dabbled in Western learning in Edo, and studied navigation and English in Hakodate. While the boys his age in Hagi were swinging swords, Yakichi was reading the scale of a sextant.

Even so, it was not enough. The English he had learned from books was nothing like the English flying around the wharf. He could not catch a single word of the sailors' rapid talk, and when he spoke to them, they only cocked their heads.

Out at sea, a whistle sounded.

Low and long, a sound that rang in the pit of the stomach. Yakichi looked up from his vocabulary book toward where it came from. A steamship, belching smoke, was slowly changing course.

(It's got no sails up. How does it move?)

How many years had passed since the day Risuke, who now called himself Shunsuke, had said that on the Sagami shore? Yakichi knew far more than he had then. He knew the word boiler, and the word piston. He had copied plans, many of them.

But he had never once seen the inside of a real engine with his own eyes.

"Yakichi."

A voice behind him, and he turned around.

Yamao Yozo stood there. The collar of his padded jacket was turned up, and his face looked a little worn. He had been a man of few words ever since the days when they went to the same teacher in Hakodate.

"Yozo-san. When did you get in from Edo?"

"This morning."

Yozo sat down beside Yakichi and for a while looked out to sea without a word.

"...Did you hear about Gotenyama?"

"I heard. Here in Yokohama the foreigners are furious. There's already a rumor going round that it was Choshu's doing."

"I see."

Yozo said nothing more. Yakichi looked at his profile and understood.

"Yozo-san. Don't tell me you were..."

Instead of answering, Yozo took something from his sleeve and laid it on Yakichi's palm.

A single small screw. Smudged black with soot.

"A souvenir from Gotenyama."

Yakichi picked up the screw between his fingertips and held it up to the sun.

In the dull light, the lines of the thread stood out sharply. Fine, shallow, exactly the same width all the way, winding round in a spiral.

"Look at it. Those threads, every one of them cut to the same depth. Not filed by hand. Cut by machine. They say in England they make thousands, tens of thousands of these, not a hair's difference between them."

"Tens of thousands..."

"We set fire to that house."

Yozo's voice was quiet.

"Burning it took one night. But they'll build it again. However many times you burn it, they'll build it again. It's a country that can make tens of thousands of these screws."

Out at sea, the whistle sounded again.

"You can't sink that ship with a sword."

Yozo said it, still gazing at the screw on his palm.

"If we're going to expel the barbarians, first we have to know them. How that ship moves. How they cut that screw. Going to war without knowing that is like fighting with a blindfold on."

"...Yozo-san, what are you thinking?"

For the first time, Yozo turned toward Yakichi.

"I'm going to England."

Yakichi caught his breath.

Leaving the country was strictly forbidden by law. If you were caught, it meant death. And it would not end with you. It would reach your family, and your domain.

"You mean it?"

"I mean it. I'm going to steal how they make things."

Yozo's eyes were steady. Yakichi knew better than anyone that he was not a man who joked.

Yakichi looked down at the screw in his hand.

In Nagasaki, in Edo, in Hakodate: what had he been learning? He had copied plans and memorized words, and still he had never seen the inside of a real engine. All he did was listen to whistles on this Yokohama wharf, day after day.

Was it going to end like this, with him just listening?

Yakichi gripped the screw hard. The spiral threads bit into his palm.

"I'm going too."

When he said it out loud, it was strange how little his voice shook.

Yozo nodded without a word. Then he let the corners of his mouth ease, just a little.

"There's one more who wants to go."

"Who?"

"The man who lit the fire."

Yozo stood up and brushed off the hem of his padded jacket.

"Monta-san."

The winter sun sank lower, and the ships offshore turned to silhouettes one by one.

The men who had lit the fire of joi were about to cross to the very country they had tried to burn with it. At the time, Yakichi had not yet noticed the irony of that.

He only felt that the screw in his palm stayed warm for a long, long while.