The Fall of Daigo
Book 3 of the Dororo Novel Series
Toriumi Jinzō
Part 2 - Nomitadani Fortress
Chapter 1
Dororo's father waved a heavy club, swaying unsteadily on his feet. Four spearmen pressed the attack, one in every direction. " Bastards, " he spat. "Don't make light of me. You must think I'm soft."
But his legs were badly injured, and his attackers knew it. He collapsed to the ground with a wound in his side. The other spearmen moved in, skewering all of his limbs. He grunted, but made no other sound.
"Ah!" Dororo's mother held her three-year-old child to her chest and cried out.
"Mommy?" Dororo asked.
"My son." 1 His mother hugged Dororo to her chest as they wept.
Then, they were traveling over a high mountain ridge and got caught in a blizzard.
"Help!" Dororo yelled. "My mom is… "
Dororo was covered in snow from head to foot and shivering violently. He was knee-deep in a white wilderness devoid of people. He wanted to run and get help faster, but going faster only made him trip and fall. He rolled down the cliff, then stumbled to h is feet again.
“Mom...”
Dororo awoke from a very deep sleep. He was burning up with fever and his back hurt like he’d been stabbed. He had dreamed of falling from an endless cliff. He’ d kept falling without reaching the ground. Now that he was awake, he remembered that he had fallen from a cliff before falling asleep.
Sometimes dreams match reality...huh.
The dream had shown him things he'd rather not see or remember, but there was something strangely nostalgic about it. He was alone in the wilderness again, just like he'd been back then. It was no surprise that he would miss his parents.
His father's murder had been unspeakably violent, but what disturbed him more than the deed itself was that he didn't know why. Why had those spearmen killed his father? What reason could they possibly have?
Dororo had run for so long in the snow and cold, trying desperately to save his mother. So much time had passed since then that Dororo couldn't even remember his mother's face clearly anymore.
Did my parents come and visit me in a dream or something? Why would they do that? Dororo shook his head. But he remembered his own past now, when he hadn’t before. His mother had called him their son. Dororo snorted. “It was just a dream.” He wondered if Hyakkimaru and Jukai had escaped safely.
A sour smell stung his nostrils. He opened his eyes and found himself lying on his back in a crudely built, one-room hut.
“Oh? You’re awake?” a woman asked. She was outside the hut, but when she saw Dororo stirring, she came inside. Dororo guessed that she was about thirty years old, with long dark hair and very pale skin. Dororo had never met her before, but she closely resembled Dororo’s mother, who he’d recently seen in his dream.
“Did you save me?” Dororo asked. “Thank you.” He remembered falling from the horse.
The woman sat down next to Dororo and felt his forehead. “You still have a fever,” she said. “You should go back to sleep.”
“I can’t,” Dororo said. “I have to go.”
The woman smiled. “I don’t think you can stand yet.”
Dororo tried to get to his feet, but pain lanced through his whole body. “Ow ow ow, it hurts!”
The woman laughed. “Well, aren’t you a strong-willed one. What’s your name?”
“Dororo.”
“Dororo? Is that your real name?”
“It is now,” he muttered.
“I’m Ochika,” she said. “You can call me auntie, if you like.”
“Where are we?” Dororo asked. There were more people outside the hut. Dororo heard the neighing and nickering of horses.
“Eguri Valley,” she said. “This is our secret hideout. No one knows we’re here.”
“Secret hideout?”
“Amida Buddha protects this place,” Ochika said. “Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe.”
Dororo was not very religious. He didn’t even know who Amida Buddha was, beyond the name.
“I have some rice porridge that should be ready to eat,” Ochika said. “Wait here. Don’t try to get up again just yet.”
Dororo had lived in a place like this,
once. He remembered a small farmhouse near the capital that he'd lived
in when he was four years old or so. He was taken in by another family
and was always made to feel different from them. Farm work started
early and ended late. He was always scolded for everything. Sometimes
he was beaten.
He understood while he was living there that his parents were gone. Gone, and never coming back.
As Dororo grew older, he was permitted to help in the kitchen and chop firewood. The family was vulgar and coarse. Dororo picked up many of their mannerisms and speech patterns.
“You would have frozen to death if we hadn’t taken you in, you little brat. You should be grateful,” the master of the house said to him.
Recalling his cruel voice made Dororo remember falling into the hands of slave traders. It had happened during the blizzard, just after his mother had frozen to death. This family had bought him. That was why he lived with them. They worked him hard, but Dororo persevered. He had no other options and nowhere else to go.
Dororo didn’t remember exactly when it happened, but one of the children in the house kept calling him a thief. When he insisted that he wasn’t, the children called him ‘Dororo’ instead, and the name stuck. 2 Dororo didn’t remember the name his parents had given him at all.
Dororo knew that he was unfortunate, but he also made the conscious choice not to suffer because of it. He had no family, so he would have to make his own way in the world from now on. His life might get better. It might get worse. All Dororo could do was grin and bear it.
At the start of the Ōnin War, the farm was overrun by bandits. The entire family was killed and the house was set on fire. Dororo only survived by hiding in the fertilizer pit until the bandits left.
Then, Dororo was able to live freely for the first time in his life. He moved to the capital and made a living as a thief, starting by stealing food from wealthy samurai and Imperial Court estates. He came to hate the samurai and the nobles for living in opulent luxury while the working poor had nothing. He picked a good spot in a burned-out temple near the heart of the city. Later, he ran into Hyakkimaru during a battle and brought him back to the temple, expecting to be paid for guiding him out of danger. Instead, Hyakkimaru had taken Dororo to Mount Kurama, and Dororo had been following him ever since.
The encampment in Eguri Valley where Ochika lived was devoted to the True Pure Land Sect of Buddhism. 3 This sect was founded by the monk Shinran 4 in the 1200s. It proved popular in the northern provinces near the Sea of Japan and spread quickly. There were many devout believers like Ochika in Kaga Province. It was considered a wise sect that offered sinners a chance to atone for their crimes and seek paradise in the afterlife. The eighth head of the sect, Rennyo, was a great proselytizer who had gathered many men and women to his cause. Support for the True Pure Land Sect was growing in the provinces of Ōmi and Yamato even now, but as it spread, it drew notice—and not always friendly notice. The sect was persecuted by other Buddhist sects and by the authorities, so many believers had to keep their worship practices secret.
Following his installation as eighth head priest at Hongan Temple in 1457, Rennyo focused his efforts on proselytizing in Ōmi Province, an area dominated by other branches of Buddhism. These congregations in Ōmi Province were frequently composed of artisan-class followers, who were able to provide financial support and protection.
The monks of the Enryaku Temple, the head temple of the Tendai Sect, 5 noticed Rennyo's successes in the provinces around Kyōto. In 1465, the Enryaku Temple sent a band of warrior monks to the Hongan Temple and destroyed it. The attacks were justified by claims that the True Pure Land Sect movement was heretical. The actual motivation for these attacks was likely financial. The Tendai Sect had significant interests in Ōmi Province that included properties and businesses, and felt they needed to prevent the sect’s growth before they felt the economic effects.
The Hongan Temple was almost entirely destroyed before armed men f rom the Takada congregation chased a way the attackers. Rennyo was able to flee at the last minute thanks to the assistance of a cooper who saw the attackers coming and led Rennyo out through the back doors of the temple.
Of course, all of these religious and political maneuverings were completely unknown to Dororo. Ochika had told him where he was, but that didn’t help him understand his actual physical location at all.
***
Dororo was able to move without pain after recovering for four days. Ochika nursed him and watched over him with great care. Dororo felt more attached to Ochika as the days passed. Ochika had once had a daughter, but she had died. Her daughter would be about Dororo’s same age, if she had lived. Sometimes s he saw the shadow of her own child’s face in Dororo’s.
“Do you have parents somewhere?” Ochika asked.
“They’re dead,” Dororo said. “I don’t even remember what they look like.”
“What were their names?”
“I don’t remember,” Dororo said. “They died when I was really young.”
“Then who raised you?”
“I was sold.”
“Sold?”
“I fell off a cliff while hunting, and some slave catchers found me.” Dororo answered simply, in short, factual sentences. He didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him. Ochika wondered if Dororo felt resentment, anger, or sadness about the loss of his parents.
Ochika sighed. “You poor thing. You probably don’t even remember where you were picked up.” She paused. “But you said you had a dream about it, just before you woke up on your first day here. Do you remember anything about where you were from the dream?”
“Not really,” Dororo said. “I was running through a mountain pass. There was a blizzard.”
“Hm, a mountain pass in a blizzard…” Ochika repeated the words a few times, then asked, “Do you remember anything else?”
“Well…there was a shrine on the side of the road.”
Ochika was stunned. “A shrine, you said?”
“I think so,” Dororo said, frowning. “I’m not really sure.” Seeing such a serious expression on Dororo’s face was exceedingly rare. “Why are you asking, aunt Ochika?”
Ochika smiled. “No reason, really. I just wanted to know more about you.”
Dororo told Ochika everything he could remember about the farming family who had bought him, his escape to the capital during the Ōnin War, and meeting Hyakkimaru.
“You’ve accomplished a lot for someone so young,” Ochika said.
Dororo wondered if Ochika had children. It wouldn’t be strange for her to have them, but Dororo never saw any, and all the men he saw in Eguri Valley seemed like Ochika’s friends, not lovers. She had no husband.
Ochika was very learned in True Pure Land Sect teachings. She was also a very hard worker. Most of the men obeyed her orders. She had dedicated her life to her religion; her devotion was admired by all.
When Dororo was entirely well, Ochika took Dororo outside and guided him around. The first thing Dororo noticed was that he couldn’t see the sky. Eguri Valley was in a deep forest gorge: the trees grew so tall and so thickly that the forest floor was always shrouded in gloom. Although there was a narrow road rising out of the gorge, very few people ever passed this way. It wasn’t widespread knowledge that there was a settlement here.
There were many small huts just like the one Ochika lived in dotted here and there in the woods. Some people lived in them singly; others shared one with their family. The largest hut was one that no one lived in. Ochika led Dororo inside and showed him the altar to Amida Buddha. He realized that this place was like a shrine. Many people were gathered inside, chanting prayers on their knees. “Namu Amida Butsu…” 6
There were no statues or religious icons. A sutra scroll hung above the crude wooden altar, but otherwise, the shrine had no iconography or decoration. Fat candles burned on the altar. Some of the worshipers burned sweet-smelling incense.
Dororo found the sutra scroll and the prayer familiar. The abandoned temple he’d lived in with Hyakkimaru, Jukai and the children had a scroll just like it. He even recognized the kanji.
“You pray, too, Dororo,” Ochika said.
At Ochika’s prompting, Dororo placed his palms together and bowed his head. “Namu Amida Butsu…”
The people finished praying in the evening. Ochika gave the order for the men to prepare their horses and ride out. The men did so, laughing and talking. They didn't return until late at night. It snowed heavily while they were gone. It was supposed to be spring, so people complained that the weather was unseasonable.
When the riders returned, Dororo thought that they smelled like blood. Some men were severely injured, and a few horses returned without their riders, but the survivors were in high spirits. They'd brought back money and food and small gifts for their friends and families.
Dororo and Ochika had a late dinner in their hut. Ochika drank unrefined sake and rubbed her hands to warm herself up. “Are you afraid of me, Dororo?” she asked quietly.
Dororo hadn't expected the question. He didn't answer immediately.
There was laughter in Ochika's eyes. “You probably figured out we were bandits a while ago. You should know that we only attack samurai estates.”
Dororo had not realized how the people here brought in supplies before, but he had observed that not all of the people were simple farmers. Some were monks with shaven heads carrying spears. Others had the look of dispossessed merchants. All of them had seen the Hongnan Temple in Kyōto burned by a rival Buddhist sect. With their former home and place of worship destroyed and their sect persecuted, they had no choice but to make a living secretly, taking revenge where they could.
It made sense for this group of religious bandits to go north along the Hokuriku Road from the capital. There were more devout believers in Amida Buddha in Kaga Province, allowing them to blend in more easily.
“I'm not afraid,” Dororo said. He kept eating dinner. “It's not like I haven't fought bandits before.”
"When did you do such a dangerous thing?" Ochika asked.
Dororo shrugged and told her about his life in the capital, dodging enemy soldiers and bandits and stealing food.
“Weren't you lonely?”
“I think I forgot how to be lonely. Anyway, I have aniki now.”
“ What's your aniki' s name?”
“Hyakkimaru. He's strong. He always protected me.”
“Who is he? What does he do?”
“He's a samurai.”
“What?”
“Well, he looks like one, anyway.” Dororo frowned. “Me and him and taifu were going north into Kaga when we got separated.”
“Taifu?” Ochika asked. Dororo had described his past briefly before, but Ochika was curious about all the details.
“He's a great doctor who studied in China,” Dororo said. “ He's like aniki's and my dad. He' s really strict, but he's also super nice.” There was a contradiction in terms here, but Dororo didn't notice. He sincerely believed that Jukai was both excessively strict and incredibly compassionate.
“I see... talking about them makes you happy. I'm glad.” She took a sip of her sake, then said, “ It's cold tonight. You should probably have some so that you don't freeze. ”
Ochika held her sake bowl out to Dororo.
“What? Is that sake? Can I really have some?”
“It's sweet, so you shouldn't have any trouble drinking it, ” Ochika said. “ It should warm you up. ”
Dororo took a cautious sip. “It tastes great!”
“You should probably drink it all,” Ochika said. “It will help you sleep.”
Dororo took another sip. He felt warmth like fever spreading from his gut all over his body. After dinner, he stretched out next to Ochika on the floor and went to sleep.
Even Dororo's breath felt too warm. Ochika awoke in the middle of the night when she heard him snoring. It must be the effect of the sake, since Dororo didn't usually snore.
Ochika sat up, then pulled up Dororo’s futon cover to resettle it around him. She caught a glimpse of Dororo’s lower half and gasped.
“My…son…” Tears sprang into her eyes
unbidden. She tucked the futon cover under Dororo’s chin, then covered
her face with her hands.
Translator's Notes:
1 Dororo’s parents call her bōya, which means “son.” They do this to conceal her gender from others. ↩
2 Dorobō means “thief” in Japanese. Dororo is a corruption of dorobō. Osamu Tezuka said dororo instead of dorobō as a child because he found the latter word difficult to pronounce. ↩
3 The True Pure Land Sect is a school of Pure Land Buddhism. It is considered the most widely practiced branch of Buddhism in Japan. Early True Pure Land Buddhism did not truly flourish until the time of Rennyo (1415–1499), who was the eighth leader of the sect. Through his charisma and proselytizing, True Pure Land Buddhism was able to amass a greater following and grow in strength, especially in Kaga Province. ↩
4 Shinran (May 21, 1173 – January 16, 1263) was a Japanese Buddhist monk, who was born in Hino (now a part of Fushimi, Ky ō to) at the turbulent close of the Heian Period and lived during the Kamakura Period. Shinran was a pupil of Hōnen and the founder of what ultimately became the True Pure Land Sect of Japanese Buddhism. ↩
5 Tendai is a Buddhist Sect established in Japan in the year 806 by a monk named Saichō, posthumously known as Dengyō Daishi. The Tendai Sect rose to prominence during the Heian period (794-1185), gradually eclipsing the powerful Yogacara Sect and competing with other forms of Buddhism to become the most influential at the Imperial Court. ↩
6 This is a general prayer or
chant to Amida Buddha, popularized by the monk Shinran.
Calling on the name of Amida Buddha is a way of expressing
faith that the worshiper will be reborn in Amida's Pure
Land as a Buddha. ↩
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