Hyakkimaru's Birth
Book 1 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 3 - A Nightmarish Fate
Tajumaru served as Gōshō's apprentice and student for twenty-one years. Gōshō was aging; his kidneys didn't function as well as they should and walking was increasingly difficult and painful. Tajumaru took over all his house calls and much of his research. He could have returned to Japan and become a doctor in his own right long since, but he hadn't completed his research on prosthetics and he was determined to stay until he discovered the secret of making prosthetic limbs that moved like real ones. He was also considerate of Gōshō's health. He wouldn't abandon the man he owed so much to, even if Gōshō expressly ordered him to go.
If Tajumaru did return to Japan, he would have to start his life over again, He had no home there. He didn't even have a place to stay. It was easier for him to bear his parents' premature deaths in China, far from where their murders had taken place.
Bifuyō had passed away some years before from an illness in her lungs. Tajumaru never took another lover after her. She remained in his thoughts and no one else could make him forget her. He remembered places they'd gone and things they'd done together. A part of him wanted to stay in Hangzhō to cherish those memories. Bifuyō's tragic early death affected him almost as profoundly as the death of his mother.
One night, while Tajumaru worked feverishly in his room on prosthetics, Gōshō summoned him. Tajumaru answered the summons, bringing a candle to his master's room. Gōshō nodded in greeting.
"Tajumaru, you have learned everything that I could possibly teach you," Gōshō said. "Your research on prosthetics is the most thorough and advanced in the world. I think that you should go find Yōda, while you still have the chance."
"Yōda?" Tajumaru asked. He'd never heard the name before.
"I've never met him," Gōshō said, "but rumor has it that he's been seen on the highest peak of Mount Wutai."
"Who is he?" Tajumaru asked.
"A hermit who studies ways to restore lost limbs," Gōshō said. "Some people call what he does magical."
Tajumaru was interested. Were there doctors who restored lost limbs completely, the way that some lizards could regrow legs? Or did Yōda use prosthetics?
"Yōda... All right. I'll try to meet him."
"You might not succeed, or it might be too late, but I think you should try," Gōshō said. "You'll certainly learn something new."
"Yes, master."
"By the way," Gōshō said, "I've heard that Zheng He will be leaving for his next grand voyage around the world soon. You and your father met him once, didn't you?"
"Yes," Tajumaru said. "I heard that his fleet would be leaving soon, though I don't know when."
"The Emperor who sent him on his first voyage has passed away, but his successor has committed to following the will of his ancestors. We should hopefully have peace for years to come."
Emperor Zhu Di had ordered Zheng He to go on his first long voyage across the sea decades ago. Tajumaru and his father had met Zheng He just before he'd departed on that voyage. Emperor Zhu Di died in a campaign against the Mongols in 1424. He was succeeded by his son, Zhu Gaochi. Zhu Gaochi died early from a heart attack and was succeeded by Zhu Di's grandson, Zhu Zhanju, who continued the progressive policies of his predecessors.
"Zheng He must be in his sixties by now, and he's still exploring. This will be his seventh long voyage, I think. It's probably his last one."
"What if I went with him?" Tajumaru asked. He phrased it as a question, but he'd already made up his mind to go. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
"What?" Gōshō asked. His eyebrows shot straight up.
"Zheng He stops in many places on his voyages. I know he has an interest in medicine and sometimes meets with doctors to gather knowledge. He also seeks out rare ingredients and medicines from all over the world. And there are some countries where autopsying the dead is permitted."
Gōshō fixed Tajumaru with an intense stare. "You're serious, aren't you?" he asked.
Tajumaru stared back, then sighed. "But I can't go now. It's impossible."
"What are you talking about? Of course you can go. You don't need to worry about me. I can still do my work here, and you'll never get this kind of opportunity again."
Tajumaru's face reddened. He knew that the coming voyage would be Zheng He's last, but he didn't feel right about leaving Gōshō alone.
"If you visit Kolkata, you should find doctors who studied under my old master, Dasgupta," Gōshō said. "I'm sure they'll work with you."
"Is it really all right for me to go?" Tajumaru asked.
"A chance like this comes once in a lifetime. I order you to go. You have a precious connection to Zheng He, and you should leverage it while you still can."
"I'll ask to meet him right away," Tajumaru said,
Tajumaru had met Zheng He more than twenty-five years before, at the beginning of Zheng He's long and storied career. Zheng He was enormously popular and much more powerful now. It was possible that he would remember Tajumaru as nothing more than an immature child. Tajumaru could propose a meeting, but he expected his proposal to be summarily rejected.
"One last thing," Gōshō said. "Are you sure you're ready to return to Japan? Your family are still considered traitors."
"I'm prepared for that," Tajumaru said. "And if I do go home, it will be after I return here. If we land in Japan during the voyage, I'll be careful."
Gōshō laughed. "I know you will."
Tajumaru took a few days to prepare, then selected lodgings at an inn near the mouth of the Yangtze River. Zheng He's flagship was currently docked in Nanking. He would have to stop near Tajumaru's inn before heading out to the open sea.
Gōshō sent Tajumaru frequent updates on the status of the preparations for Zheng He's next voyage. Zheng He was set to leave Nanking on December 6, which meant that he'd reach the mouth of the Yangtze River on December 21.
Zheng He left and arrived on time, but he was constantly busy with government work, visiting temples, and preparing for the voyage. Tajumaru almost despaired of meeting him before his ships left China.
A time for them to meet finally presented itself when Tajumaru saw Zheng He praying at a temple to the sea goddess Mazu. He was sitting down before a large monument and updating his journal when Tajumaru caught sight of him.
Tajumaru didn't hesitate: he ran up to Zheng He, slipping past his guards before falling to his knees in a pose of complete submission. On his knees with his face to the dirt, he said, "Please forgive my terrible rudeness. It's been so many years that you probably don't remember me, but..."
One of the chamberlains that attended on Zheng He yanked Tajumaru's shoulder and pulled him away.
"Disrespectful wretch," he spat.
Tajumaru ignored the chamberlain. He rolled over to Zheng He and put his face to the ground once more.
"I'll get rid of this ruffian," the chamberlain said primly. He was about to kick Tajumaru in the spine when Zheng He made a cutting motion with his hand.
"I want no violence here," Zheng He said. "We are praying for a safe voyage." He looked curiously at Tajumaru.
Tajumaru raised his head slightly.
"How long ago was I in Japan?" Zheng He asked wistfully. He smiled, but then his eyes went wide. "Wait. Twenty-five years ago, you were...are you Lord Hisamaro's son?"
"Yes. When Lord Chin Uiro was escorting you around Senshū, my father and I came to meet you."
Zheng He blinked in surprise. "I see. So you are his son. What is your name?"
"Tajumaru," he said.
"That's right. I remembered it." He smiled again, then took Tajumaru's hands in his and helped him stand. "Please forgive my chamberlain's rudeness," he said. "I heard about your circumstances from Lord Uiro. He came to greet me when my fleet stopped at Karatsu."
"Karatsu?" Tajumaru asked. "I haven't been there in such a long time." Feelings of nostalgia for those last happy days on the beaches of Karatsu with Namitarō overwhelmed Tajumaru for a moment. Zheng He remembered him, which seemed like a miracle.
Tajumaru remembered Zheng He telling him to become a great doctor, just like his father. At the time, Tajumaru hadn't wanted to be a doctor at all, but he'd still said, "Yes, sir."
"I regret that Lord Hisamaro never got to sail with me and my physicians," Zheng He said. "It really is a shame." Zheng He had researched medicine extensively in his travels and had even brought back gifts for Hisamaro to Japan, but he'd never delivered them. Hisamaro was long dead by the time Zheng He returned to Japan.
Zheng He gladly accepted Tajumaru's request to join him on his next voyage. He was permitted to stay on Zheng He's own ship, where he could live and work with other physicians from around the world. Zheng He was a kind man, and he and Tajumaru were soon on friendly terms.
On February 6, 1431, official preparations for Zheng He's seventh voyage began. The fleet would not set sail until December 9 of that year. It had been nine years since the previous voyage, but preparations for a fleet as massive as Zheng He's always took a lot of time.
The fleet had sixty-one large junk ships and over two hundred smaller, speedier ships. All told, the ships could hold almost thirty thousand people. The crew included carpenters, shipwrights, cooks, warriors, and of course physicians. Almost two hundred physicians were attached to Zheng He's fleet. Tajumaru was among them. Illness was sure to break out during a long voyage, and people could be injured in battles with pirates or during day-to-day living. Tajumaru served as Zheng He's personal physician on his ship and was treated as an honored guest.
The fleet neared Vietnam on February 6, 1432. They stopped at the island of Java to resupply, then headed for India. Tajumaru tried to track down Dasgupta's apprentices, but they were nowhere to be found. Zheng He extended their stay by a month to help Tajumaru find them to no avail. Tajumaru left India disappointed.
Shortly after, Zheng He introduced Tajumaru to an Iranian physician named Ali Manka. Ali Manka had accompanied Zheng He on many of his previous expeditions and was well-versed in both medicine and geography. He had friends and acquaintances in various places throughout the world. He was a tall man with dark skin, white hair and a strangely charismatic aura. Everyone seemed to like him.
When Tajumaru first met Ali Manka, he said, "Hippocrates was a genius. Who else would have thought to separate magic from medicine at such an early point in history?"
Tajumaru liked him almost instantly.
"Hippocrates also taught about bones and anatomy," Ali said. "Galen revealed many secrets regarding internal organs and their function. The theory of the circulatory system is largely his invention. Hippocrates and Galen paved the way for us; we can only hope to contribute in our own small way.”
These words warmed Tajumaru's heart. He and Ali Manka were colleagues as well as friends and performed many surgeries together, including autopsies. The first time Tajumaru performed an autopsy, he was so excited that he couldn't keep his hands from shaking.
"Egyptians know everything there is to know about autopsies," Ali Manka said. "They learned it from the mummification process of their pharaohs and nobility."
Tajumaru was jealous of Ali Manka's detailed knowledge. He couldn't help but compare his own knowledge gained from diagrams with Ali Manka's lived experience. Tajumaru wanted to experience everything. He learned how tendons attached to joints, similar to how the thread connected all the pieces on Gōshō's skeleton. He was awed at this discovery. There were times when he felt like he was seeing the hand of the gods in the body's design.
But then he studied a stillborn who was missing all four limbs, and was forced to revise some of his ideas. The poor thing hadn't developed enough to live. Seeing such a perversion of the norm deeply disturbed Tajumaru. How could something so tragic and wrong be part of the gods' design?
Tajumaru and Ali Manka were good friends and research partners for the duration of Zheng He's voyage. When a man's leg got bitten by a snake and started rotting below the knee, Ali helped Tajumaru perform the surgery to remove the leg. He sharpened his tools and removed the leg in one clean cut, severing bone. Tajumaru wasn't surprised; Ali Manka had a lot of surgical experience. The patient, who was anesthetized, didn't wake or even twitch.
Over the next four months, Tajumaru learned more about surgery than he had in the previous ten years. He learned of many plants that could be used to make anesthesia, like the seeds of Korean morning glories. He also gained a lot more experience at performing surgeries himself. He never did learn what the secret of Hua Tuo's anesthetic was, but he suspected that the secret ingredient was wither crushed Korean morning glory seeds or a rare kind of wolfsbane that acted as a numbing agent.
Tajumaru also learned more than he'd ever thought to about poisons. Ali Manka taught him how to mix antidotes. Opium could be made from poppies and used to mitigate pain, though Ali Manka advised him to use it sparingly.
On March 11, 1433, Zheng He's fleet docked in Kolkata. Tajumaru spent twenty days in the city, learning all that he could. Zheng He brought him and the other physicians gifts of rare herbs and plants.
"If your father could see how you've honored his legacy, he would be proud," Zheng He said.
Tajumaru was touched. "I wish he could have made this journey. He would have loved traveling and learning and helping everyone."
"Yes, I believe you're right."
A short time later, Tajumaru returned to Hangzhō. He had been gone for more than three years. Gōshō had succumbed to his disease and passed into the next world. Teihō greeted him with tears in her eyes. Gōshō's funeral had happened long since. She showed Tajumaru to his grave so that he could pay his respects.
At his master's grave, Tajumaru remembered their final conversation. I think that you should go find Yōda, while you still have the chance... rumor has it that he's been seen on the highest peak of Mount Wutai. He's a hermit who studies ways to restore lost limbs.
Tajumaru sent a message to Zheng He to thank him for taking him on his last voyage, then made preparations to travel to Mount Wutai.
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