furniture and looking like one of the machine-made blades issued to the troops. Many officers did as he did—re-dressed a revered family sword in the handle and guard and sheath of the issue weapon, and tossed the cheap steel blade away. Yamada’s katana was four hundred years old, gleamed like a mirror, and had been hammered and folded by a master smith in a time when such a weapon was worth a year’s pay. You could see the layers in the polished steel. The hamon—the temper line that gave a hard edge backed by a flexible body—was called cranes-in-flight.
His sword was as beautiful as it was deadly. The sword was the soul of the samurai.
Only a man ready to die would charge a machine gun with nothing save a sword. After the machine gun was blown up by a grenade and the wounded enemies taken prisoner?
A wounded and soon-to-be-dead-anyway captive could be used to practice one’s stroke. Any idiot with a strong arm and a sharp blade could lop off a man’s head; an expert could slice through the bone and muscle but leave a small bit of skin at the throat, so that the head stayed connected to the body. When someone had elected—or been ordered—to commit seppuku, once the belly was slit, it was appropriate to allow a friend or relative acting as a second to finish the job by taking the head. But—for the second to allow his stroke to completely decapitate the suicide? Well, that was bad form. And practice on living tissue was, in these modern times, harder to manage. At the height of the samurai period, a man allowed to wear the two swords could pick anyone of low status he wished and kill him for any number of reasons, and because he felt like it and needed the practice was enough. No one would blink at such a thing. When a man was hungry and sheep were there, who would speak for the sheep?
Since the wearing of swords had been banned sixty-seven years ago by the Meiji emperor Mutsuhito—a black day, that—the samurai class had been effectively destroyed. Yamada’s grandfather had been the last in his family to wear both wakizashi and katana, and Yamada remembered the old man’s stories of how many samurai had taken their own lives on the day the order banning swords as public wear had gone into effect.
“Mutsuhito was possessed of an akumi,” the old man had told a wide-eyed Yamada when he’d been a boy of but six or eight. “He was not the real emperor, though none dared say so aloud. A powerful evil spirit infested him and bade him destroy the samurai class, and this he did.”
The old man would always spit on the ground at this point, and such an action inside the house irritated Yamada’s mother no end, but there was nothing she could say about that, either. Her husband’s father was not to be berated for such things by a woman.
“Never forget, little Hajime, that you are a samurai, no matter what anyone says. You must learn the code of Bushido and live by it.”
Yamada had nodded, and he had made some effort to keep to the code. He had learned the arts, martial and intellectual. He could compose poetry, draw with ink and brush; he had even helped cast his own tsuba, the brass guard for his sword, a blade that had belonged to his grandfather, and his grandfather’s grandfather before that.
And yes, he had, a few times, availed himself of captives, or even condemned Japanese criminals, to practice his cutting. His sword was a three-body blade, which meant it could slice through three men stacked one upon another. Inscribed into the tang of the blade, hidden under the handle, along with the name of the smith and the season the sword had been made, were the date and name of the man who had performed the body test. Three men had been used. Sometimes it was done with corpses, but in this case the tang recorded that the men used in the test had been alive.
There was a story his grandfather used to tell, about a certain condemned samurai who knew he would be used for cutting practice thus. Denied the
His sword was as beautiful as it was deadly. The sword was the soul of the samurai.
Only a man ready to die would charge a machine gun with nothing save a sword. After the machine gun was blown up by a grenade and the wounded enemies taken prisoner?
A wounded and soon-to-be-dead-anyway captive could be used to practice one’s stroke. Any idiot with a strong arm and a sharp blade could lop off a man’s head; an expert could slice through the bone and muscle but leave a small bit of skin at the throat, so that the head stayed connected to the body. When someone had elected—or been ordered—to commit seppuku, once the belly was slit, it was appropriate to allow a friend or relative acting as a second to finish the job by taking the head. But—for the second to allow his stroke to completely decapitate the suicide? Well, that was bad form. And practice on living tissue was, in these modern times, harder to manage. At the height of the samurai period, a man allowed to wear the two swords could pick anyone of low status he wished and kill him for any number of reasons, and because he felt like it and needed the practice was enough. No one would blink at such a thing. When a man was hungry and sheep were there, who would speak for the sheep?
Since the wearing of swords had been banned sixty-seven years ago by the Meiji emperor Mutsuhito—a black day, that—the samurai class had been effectively destroyed. Yamada’s grandfather had been the last in his family to wear both wakizashi and katana, and Yamada remembered the old man’s stories of how many samurai had taken their own lives on the day the order banning swords as public wear had gone into effect.
“Mutsuhito was possessed of an akumi,” the old man had told a wide-eyed Yamada when he’d been a boy of but six or eight. “He was not the real emperor, though none dared say so aloud. A powerful evil spirit infested him and bade him destroy the samurai class, and this he did.”
The old man would always spit on the ground at this point, and such an action inside the house irritated Yamada’s mother no end, but there was nothing she could say about that, either. Her husband’s father was not to be berated for such things by a woman.
“Never forget, little Hajime, that you are a samurai, no matter what anyone says. You must learn the code of Bushido and live by it.”
Yamada had nodded, and he had made some effort to keep to the code. He had learned the arts, martial and intellectual. He could compose poetry, draw with ink and brush; he had even helped cast his own tsuba, the brass guard for his sword, a blade that had belonged to his grandfather, and his grandfather’s grandfather before that.
And yes, he had, a few times, availed himself of captives, or even condemned Japanese criminals, to practice his cutting. His sword was a three-body blade, which meant it could slice through three men stacked one upon another. Inscribed into the tang of the blade, hidden under the handle, along with the name of the smith and the season the sword had been made, were the date and name of the man who had performed the body test. Three men had been used. Sometimes it was done with corpses, but in this case the tang recorded that the men used in the test had been alive.
There was a story his grandfather used to tell, about a certain condemned samurai who knew he would be used for cutting practice thus. Denied the
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