Living Machines

The 3rd month of the 3rd year of Bunkyu (1863).

The Kigai Maru, a Western-style sailing ship belonging to the Choshu domain, was making her way across a rough spring sea.

Nomura Yakichi stood on the afterdeck, reading the wind. He had only just been given command of this ship. The seamanship he had learned from books in Nagasaki and Hakodate was finally proving its worth on a real sea. Each time he changed the set of the sails, the ship turned obediently.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

And yet everything on this ship, down to the last deck plank and the last block in her rigging, had been made abroad. If a sail tore, they could mend it. But what if the keel broke? What if the rudder fittings failed? There was not one man in this country who could make them again.

"Yakichi."

Yamao Yozo had come up beside him. Yozo had shipped aboard for this voyage too.

"We've learned to sail her, at least."

"Yes."

"And to build her?"

Yakichi shook his head in silence. Yozo took the screw out from inside his kimono and rolled it between his fingertips. The very one he had carried away from Gotenyama.

"When we get back, I'm going to see Lord Sufu."

Yozo said.

"The two of us."

◇

Sufu Masanosuke was the senior official who ran the affairs of the Choshu domain, and he was known for his unrivaled love of drink.

When the two of them presented their petition in a room at the domain's residence in Kyoto, Sufu, as expected, smelled faintly of sake even in the middle of the day.

When he had finished reading the petition, Sufu gazed up at the ceiling for a while. Then, all at once, he slapped his knee and burst out laughing.

"Interesting. Very interesting indeed."

"Then..."

"Wait."

Sufu stopped laughing and lowered his voice.

"Leaving the country is forbidden by the law of the land. The domain can't openly allow it. If it comes out, it won't end with your heads. The house of Mori itself will be in danger."

Yakichi clenched his fists on his knees.

"And yet."

Sufu turned the cup at his side with a fingertip.

"The ones making all this noise about 'expel the barbarians' are waving their swords around without even knowing what the enemy looks like. Someone has to go and see the other side. I've thought so for a long time."

Sufu looked from one face to the other.

"Officially, I'll know nothing about it. In exchange, behind the scenes I'll do everything I can for you. Will that do?"

The two bowed low.

◇

The first to come charging in when he heard about it was Inoue Monta.

Monta couldn't even wait to go through Sufu. He petitioned the lord of the domain, Mori Takachika, directly. This was the lord who, whatever his retainers proposed, would nod and say "Make it so," and who was nicknamed "Lord Make-It-So" for it.

But this one time, the lord did not say "Make it so."

"This is not a matter to bring to me directly."

Monta withdrew, still prostrate. Yet when he came out into the corridor of the Kyoto residence, he grinned.

"Got a scolding."

"Monta-san, doesn't that mean he turned you down?"

When Yakichi said it, Monta shook his head.

"No. All the lord said was 'Don't bring it to me directly.' He never said one word about not going."

The 18th day of the 4th month. The three of them received unofficial permission. With it came an allowance of 200 ryo each.

◇

The fourth came from an unexpected direction.

One day, a man named Endo, who served as resident officer at the domain's Edo residence, brought along his younger brother.

"This one won't stop asking to be taken along, no matter what I say."

The man who stepped out from behind his elder brother was an unremarkable fellow of about Monta's age. The second son of a family of Choshu's middle-ranking samurai, his name was Endo Kinsuke.

Kinsuke hardly said a word. Once the greetings were done, he simply sat listening intently to the other three.

Later, when they went to Yokohama, Yakichi noticed that Kinsuke had stopped in front of a money changer's shop.

Kinsuke had a silver coin on his palm and was staring at it. Its edge was milled with notches, and an eagle stood out in relief on one face.

"They say it's a silver coin from a country called Mexico."

For the first time, Kinsuke spoke up of his own accord.

"Money from some country across the sea nobody's ever heard of. And it passes for the same value here in Yokohama, in Shanghai, anywhere. The weight, the amount of alloy, every coin is exactly the same, so nobody doubts it."

Kinsuke flicked the coin with a fingertip. It gave a short, clear ring.

"Money in Japan is different in every domain. Domain notes, you take them to the next domain over and they're just scraps of paper."

Yakichi watched his profile in silence. This man looked at money with the same eyes Yozo turned on a screw.

◇

The fifth, Monta dragged along by force.

The 6th day of the 5th month. Monta grabbed Ito Shunsuke and hauled him off into a back garden where no one could see.

"Shunsuke. We're going to England."

No preamble, nothing.

For an instant Shunsuke's eyes went wide. Then his hand went to the front of his kimono. Inside was the piece of melted glass he had picked up that morning in the ashes of Gotenyama.

"...You want me?"

Shunsuke had been born into a poor farming family in Suo, and had become the lowest of samurai only because his father was adopted into a foot soldier's household. He was not born to stand shoulder to shoulder with the sons of high-ranking houses and travel abroad.

"Want's got nothing to do with it. You saw that window that night, didn't you?"

Monta seized Shunsuke by the shoulder.

"I'm going to see the country that makes those windows. You're coming too."

Inside his kimono, Shunsuke gripped the piece of glass.

His answer was already decided.

◇

The 7th day of the 5th month. The five passed through the gate of the British consulate in Yokohama.

It was the first time in their lives they had set foot in a foreigners' office with swords at their hips. Thick carpet covered the corridor, and their footsteps made no sound at all. A large clock on the wall ticked away the time, tock, tock, in a rhythm unlike any temple bell in Japan.

The consul, Abel Gower, was a tall man with a mustache. When he had heard the five men's request through the interpreter, the consul raised his eyebrows and looked at each of their faces again in turn.

"You gentlemen are from Choshu, are you not?"

The five stiffened in spite of themselves. Even in Yokohama, people were whispering that it was Choshu men who had burned the British legation at Gotenyama that winter. And three of those men were sitting here now.

But Gower asked nothing more. Instead, he lifted the corners of his mouth, just slightly.

"I have no reason to turn away young men who wish to know the world. I will help you."

Shunsuke clenched his hands on his knees. An official of the country they had burned was offering to lend a hand to the men who had burned it.

However, the consul went on. Through the interpreter, he laid out the figures, apologetically.

The passage alone was 400 ryo a head. A year of living over there would cost more. Estimating as low as they possibly could, each would need 1,000 ryo (roughly equivalent to 100 million yen today).

"1,000 ryo..."

The words slipped out of Yakichi. The allowance from the domain was 600 ryo for the three of them. For five to go, it fell hopelessly short.

In the heavy silence, only Monta was glaring at the ceiling, thinking something over.

"There's money at the Azabu residence, isn't there."

"Monta-san, that's..."

Shunsuke's face changed color. At the domain's Azabu residence, 10,000 ryo was stored away for buying guns from abroad. The domain's lifeblood money.

"We won't spend it. We'll just put it up as collateral."

Monta stood up.

◇

Sato Sadajiro, chief clerk of the Izukura, the merchant house that served the domain, heard them out, put down his abacus, and folded his arms.

"If I can take the 10,000 ryo at Azabu as collateral, I'll lend you 5,000. But you'll need the man in charge at the residence to put his seal on it."

The man who held that money at the residence was named Murata Zoroku. Later he would change his name to Omura Masujiro, and he would be the one to build Japan's modern military system.

Murata frowned, his broad forehead creasing, and heard the five out to the end.

"I refuse."

"Murata-san."

"That is gun money. Money for the domain's defense. To make it collateral for some young men's trip abroad..."

Monta took a step forward.

"Murata-san. You buy the guns, and then what?"

"What do you mean, then what?"

"You buy foreign guns from foreigners, and when the bullets run out you buy more from foreigners. When they break you buy more. How long do you mean to fight a war that way?"

Murata fell silent.

"We're not going to buy guns. We're going to bring home how the country that makes guns makes them. If you won't put your seal on it, I'm not moving from here."

Monta plumped himself down right there on the spot. It was half a threat.

After a long silence, Murata let out a deep sigh.

"...Come back alive. Otherwise, this seal is just the seal on a debt."

◇

The 11th day of the 5th month. The night before they sailed.

In a room at an inn in Yokohama, the five wrote a letter addressed to the domain's senior officials.

They apologized for using the domain's money without leave, and swore they had no intention of spending it on food and drink. And at the very end, they added this:

Please think of it as having bought living machines, and forgive us.

It was Monta who laid down the brush. Just before this, Monta had severed his ties with the family that had adopted him. So that if he became a criminal, the blame would not reach them.

When the letter was done, Shunsuke stayed on alone under the lantern, facing another sheet of paper. He wanted to set down what was in his heart as a poem.

Again and again he began, and stopped his brush. To cut off his topknot, put on unfamiliar Western clothes, and cross to a foreign land. That also meant swallowing his shame as a samurai. He was going to bow his head to foreigners with the same mouth that had shouted "expel the barbarians."

At last, Shunsuke wrote it in one breath.

ますらをの　恥をしのびて　ゆく旅は　すめらみくにの　ためとこそ知れ

Know that this journey, on which a warrior swallows his shame, is for the sake of our land.

Shunsuke waited for the ink to dry, then folded the paper carefully.

Then, one after another, the five cut off their topknots.

Each time the scissors went in, there was a dull sound, crunch, crunch. The severed topknots rolled one by one onto the tatami. The proof of a samurai. The thing they had tied up every morning since they were born.

No one said anything.

They put their arms into the Western clothes they had ready. Cramped, and they couldn't quite work out how the buttons went. Looking at each other, the first to burst out laughing was Shunsuke.

"Monta-san, you've got that on back to front."

"What?"

The laughter spread. The five laughed together, stifling their voices. As they laughed, Yakichi noticed Kinsuke's eyes had gone a little red. No one mentioned it.

◇

The 12th day of the 5th month, in the 3rd year of Bunkyu (1863). Late at night.

The five boarded a small boat and headed for the British steamship Chelswick, anchored offshore.

The waves were calm. Only the creak of the oar sounded in the dark. The lights of the shore slowly drew away.

One by one, they climbed the rope ladder let down from the ship's side. When Yakichi, the last to climb, set foot on the deck, a whistle sounded above his head.

Low and long, a sound that rang in the pit of the stomach. The sound he had heard over and over on the Yokohama wharf. But tonight, that sound was sounding for them.

The ship began to move.

The five stood in a row at the deck rail and watched the shore recede.

Yozo held the screw.

Shunsuke held the melted glass.

Kinsuke held the Mexican silver coin.

Monta held nothing. He only glared into the dark beyond, toward the west, still unseen.

Yakichi closed his eyes and listened until the last echo of the whistle had faded.

They did not yet know.

That 2 days before, their home province of Choshu had suddenly fired its cannon on an American merchant ship passing through the strait at Shimonoseki. That the war to expel the barbarians had finally begun.

Behind the five, as they set out to learn from the enemy's country, their homeland had plunged into war with that enemy.