Above the East China Sea: A Novel by Sarah Bird Page A

was a god, descended in an unbroken line from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, who brought light to the world, and that his every act and thought were blessed by heaven, made all hardships endurable. I focused on how trivial my sorrow was in comparison to the threat that our dear Father Emperor was now facing from the despotic Western powers. The emperor’s divinity eased our worries: my father’s about his three sons, Hatsuko’s and mine about our brothers.
    Really, it was silly to worry. In school we had learned that never in history had foreign soldiers invaded Japan. Kublai Khan had tried in 1281, but a
kamikaze,
a divine wind, had arisen to destroy the mighty Khan’s fleet, a naval force five times as large as the Spanish Armada would be some three centuries later. As long as the Sun Goddess’s descendant sat on the Chrysanthemum Throne, no enemy could harm our sons or brothers defending him. Though I would not serve our glorious cause as an educated subject, I would do my best to bring honor to my family and to our emperor no matter what my destiny might be.
    “Oh, Father,” Hatsuko called out, startling me. “What has Tamiko done?”
    Blood dripped from the tip of Father’s ear in a steady stream down the side of his face and onto the collar of his
yukata.
I had nipped the tender flesh of his ear. Our father had not uttered one sound, one word, not of pain or of reproach. Instead, he pressed his handkerchief against the wound, and, without a word or glance in my direction, took the scissors from my hand and gave them to Hatsuko. I sank into myself as Hatsuko finished the job I had botched.
    A few hours later, all the inhabitants of our village had gathered in our courtyard. It was rare that they’d all stopped work this way. Everyone’s workdays had grown longer, since Tokyo needed every sen we could provide to help in the fight against the Western imperialists. And, since we were such a backward place that required so much additionaladministration, we were taxed twice what other prefectures were. Many of the lazier farmers claimed that these necessary taxes were bankrupting them. I smelled them now, their sweat, the stink of night soil from their fields, as all the other villagers crowded in next to me in the courtyard of my family’s house while we waited for my father to speak. I shuddered at the thought that I would be condemned to marry one of their sons. Father and Hatsuko stood on the long veranda that ran the length of our house. The ear I had cut was covered with white gauze. The noonday sun grew hot on our heads and the drone of the cicadas rose to an unbearable pitch.
    On the shaded veranda, Hatsuko cradled a case made of
hinoki
wood, the whitest and holiest of all woods, for it contained the photo of our father, the emperor. Usually it was safeguarded inside the
hōanden
built in the yard of our school, where we could bow to it each day, but today was special, and, with great care, the photo had been transported here to watch over the proceedings. With great solemnity, Father put on a pair of white gloves, then carefully took the case of pale wood from Hatsuko. Since none of us was worthy of gazing upon the emperor’s image, we all bowed our heads even before he could unlatch the case.
    My twin cousins, Shinsei and Uei, stood beside me, heads lowered. The acrid scent of their nervousness wafted over to me. They were good students, but they had both been caught too many times speaking
Uchināguchi,
and been punished with whippings and by having to wear the humiliating “dialect tag” on strings around their necks that they couldn’t remove until they caught someone else using our backward language. Those infractions would eliminate them from consideration; they would not be going on to high school either. Like mine, their lives would end in our small village. I wanted to reach out and take my old friends by their hands, to stand next to them as we endured our shame together. But it had been many