Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 2: Supernatural Babylon
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 1: Impossible Fight to the Death
Chapter 7: Rashōmon: The Meiji Edition
It was autumn on the second day of the ninth month of the old calendar.
The wind blowing through one part of the Tsuchimikado family’s Tōkyō training center was eerily warm. Voices echoed in the great hall floored with gleaming wood, all chanting the Benevolent Kings sutra. The branches of the pine tree standing in the inner courtyard did not so much as quiver. The moon shone bright white like a luminescent brush stroke made in the heavens. It was the day after the new moon. Crickets chirped in the courtyard, adding their voices to the sutra.
Those in the Tsuchimikado training hall were fasting as part of a sacred ritual. Incense burned on the altar arranged at the back of the great hall. Rice paper screens held the incense in the hall, making it uncomfortably warm and stuffy. The front and rear doors were barred. The place where Yukari sat was defended with thick iron plates, as was the courtyard outside.
The recitation of the Benevolent Kings sutra, which drives away demons, continued without pause.
The Tsuchimikado family and their associates wore eboshi and formal robes. They each held a small sword. They took their places on three sides of the room—all except the side of the room facing the rice paper screen that opened onto the courtyard.
Meanwhile, Hirai Yasumasa held Yukari in his arms. He was dressed in pure white vestments with a black eboshi neatly tied over his white hair. Yukari sat with her hands joined in prayer and her eyes closed. The elderly sorcerer sat formally next to her with one knee raised and both hands on her shoulders. He recited the sutra along with everyone else, resembling a dignified crane protecting a chick.
The moon raced through the sky. Eight o’clock—the appointed hour—had already passed. Those assembled here felt uneasy as they chanted the sutra into the dark night.
Kōda Shigeyuki sat on a large stone in the courtyard, wearing a white haori, black hakama, and—unusually—a small sword at his waist. He stared silently at the moon. Narutaki Junichi stood near him, gripping a wooden sword. Kamo scanned their surroundings in his capacity as a sorcerer of middling capabilities.
While the ritual fast was being conducted, neither the main gate nor the side gate could be opened at all. Nor could the screen doors dividing the great hall and the courtyard be opened.
Those who had taken position in the ritual hall faced Lieutenant Katō’s heretical sorcery head-on. Hirai Yasumasa would oppose him directly if he appeared. Shigeyuki and Junichi would do all they could as well.
Dr. Morita was also present in the ritual hall to keep an eye on his patient. He intended to spend the night in the ritual hall if necessary. Kō Hō was also present, of course, as Yukari’s constant shadow. Yukari had asked the woman to come with her this evening.
Time was a strange thing. The hours between eight and ten seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, but then everything slowed down. Close to eleven o’clock, it seemed like time stood still completely. The world held its breath. Those in the ritual hall froze, unable to move from their places.
The ritual participants continued chanting the Benevolent Kings sutra in a state of irritation. Junichi paced back and forth across the courtyard.
Several thin sheets of paper came fluttering through the air and fell into the courtyard.
Kamo stood up in surprise and picked up scraps of paper from the grass. Blood was soaked into them. They shook slightly like white butterflies on the verge of death. When he unfolded one, the Seimei Seal was boldly drawn in black at the center.
“Damn!” Kamo cried out.
“What is it?” Shigeyuki asked.
Kamo crumpled the scrap of paper and stowed it in his sleeve, then turned his eyes toward the great hall. The doors were still closed.
“The shikigami we sent to Katō last night have returned to us via counter-shikigami,” Kamo said.
Shigeyuki’s eyes flashed.
“Are you saying every shikigami dispatched by the Tsuchimikado family has been driven back?”
“Exactly. That means Katō is now free to send out his own shikigami at will. The only reason he did not act until now was that our shikigami were resisting his actions. But now…”
“He’s coming?” Shigeyuki pulled both hands out from inside his coat and stood, his expression rigid.
“Without a doubt.”
“How will he send his shikigami?”
“I don’t know. Most likely they will take the form of birds. Before long, I expect that night birds will swarm into this hall in large numbers. We must shoot them down. If even a single one manages to fly in beyond those doors, we will lose.”
“I understand.” Shigeyuki gripped the short sword at his waist and stared beyond the earthen wall toward the main gate.
Dr. Morita remained silently, listening.
Time stilled horribly, uncomfortably, like it was resisting an ancient and cosmic force. No one spoke. Shigeyuki, Kamo, and Junichi huddled close together, eyes scanning three directions, ready to confront the shikigami.
After several minutes had passed, the dark forest behind the main gate rustled all at once as a flock of night birds took to the air.
This marked the beginning of a fight to the death.
Night birds were ominous demons of the dark. These shikigami in the form of birds attacked the ritual hall mercilessly in great numbers.
The great hall where Yukari sat was illuminated by a single candle. The ritual participants did not cease their chant for a single moment. Hirai Yasumasa maintained his constant vigil over Yukari, his white robes shining faintly in the dim light.
Kō Hō sat in front of the doors leading to the courtyard with her back to the others. Since dusk, she had been reciting something quite different from the Benevolent Kings sutra in a voice inaudible to those in the hall.
No one paid any attention to Kō Hō, and that was their undoing. People trembled in fear at the thought of the shikigami getting in. Even Hirai Yasumasa felt fear in that moment.
As the shikigami closed in, Yasumasa heard Kō Hō’s chant clearly for a moment. He did not recognize it. The words were in Chinese. She was practically singing, the words following a distinct melody.
Time, O time, my time,
O time that shall never come again,
A stalwart man seen only once in ten thousand generations,
A time that comes around only once in fifty thousand years…
Kō Hō’s song overflowed with emotion, and then she screamed. Her slender form rose up into the air.
Yasumasa thought that he was having some kind of nightmare. He held Yukari’s shoulders tightly and cried out, “Complete the ritual!”
The chanting of the Benevolent Kings Sutra went on without pause. No one else in the hall reacted to Kō Hō at all.
“He has put them under a binding spell!” Yasumasa yelled, his bloodshot eyes finding the floating woman as she continued to rise. Her hair was disheveled, and her body moved back and forth like a puppet on strings. When her head touched the ceiling of the hall, she opened her vacant eyes like a dead person resurrected and swept her right hand up in a great, flashing arc.
The next moment, her hand gripped a sword that shone like it was made of fire.
O keen sword of Ryūsen, how can I leave you unused?
Time, O time, my time…
Kō Hō began her chant again.
“A sword-song! To think this woman was a curse sorcerer of Tonghak all along!”
Yasumasa did not move away from Yukari as much as an inch. He knew about Tonghak and Cheondoism in his capacity as a sorcerer. Tonghak sorcerers drew on ancient knowledge that connected to the immortality arts of the Chinese. This was his first time witnessing a secret art that he had only read about in books: a Time Invocation, during which a sorcerer danced with a sword and rose up to thirty meters in the air.
“What is the meaning of this?! Why is a heretical woman in this consecrated hall?!” Yasumasa shouted, but his shout was drowned out by the chanting of those around him.
Kō Hō danced in the air, untouchable.
For the first time in his life, Hirai Yasumasa experienced the terror of death. Worse, he felt the icy touch of a fate far worse than death. His grip on Yukari slackened for a fraction of a second.
He gripped her again firmly, but it was already too late.
Yukari opened her eyes, yet it was not Yukari. Her spirit was elsewhere, drawn away by a powerful darkness. Her cheeks were hollow, her expression desolate.
***
Yukari suddenly startled awake. She felt like she’d been slapped. To her astonishment, the high ceiling of the training hall was right before her eyes. Glancing down, she saw an old man in white robes crouched down near an extinguished candle. He was on his knees, clutching his head like he was in great pain.
Yukari… Yukari…
A girl lay on her side on the floor below. Her wide-open eyes stared upward at Yukari, who was floating in midair. The girl was herself, but that was impossible. She doubted her own eyes.
Terrified, Yukari looked around. She was suspended in midair, lightly bouncing up and down. She felt drunk: intoxicated by a strange ecstasy that evoked the sensation of falling endlessly. What surprised her more than anything was the realization that she was not her real, physical self. No. She was occupying the body of Kō Hō.
Yukari screamed, but no one heard her.
Time, O time, my time,
O time that will never come again…
Driven mad, Yukari kicked down the doors of the great hall and fled outside.
She thought that she had just stepped into hell. Countless bird corpses littered the garden. In the sea of blood-soaked feathers, she saw Kōda Shigeyuki brandishing a bamboo sword. Kamo was flinging talismans imbued with spells.
The number of birds attacking did not decrease. Her face—no, Kō Hō’s face— turned ashen.
There was another young man wielding a wooden sword against the colorful night birds: Narutaki Junichi.
Yukari felt a surge of renewed strength. Was Kō Hō feeling this as well? Her thrill at seeing Junichi faded in moments. She searched the garden desperately for the person she missed most: her brother.
Where is he? Why isn’t he here?
Yukari briefly forgot that she was flying and being directed by Kō Hō. In despair, she turned her face upward and collided head-on with another person staring straight down at her.
Katō Yasunori.
Yukari froze. Then white foam burst and popped across her field of vision, leaving nothing but darkness behind.
***
Kōda Shigeyuki fought hard against the great flock of night birds. He saw the doors of the hall blown away with a violent, explosive sound. Kō Hō flew out of them, her feet resting on nothing.
Shigeyuki screamed. This was impossible! It couldn’t be happening!
Then he saw another flying person—Katō Yasunori. He caught Kō Hō in his arms and flew upward.
“Katō Yasunori, you demon from hell, come down here!” Shigeyuki roared.
Dr. Morita noticed the two people flying and blanched. He had expected to see Lieutenant Katō do sorcerous things, but not Kō Hō.
Time, O time, my time!
As Kō Hō swung her sword and danced rapturously through the air, Dr. Morita observed a phenomenon explained by European psychiatrists such as Fechner and Freud. They claimed that when ecstasy reached its utmost peak, the power of the mind became material and capable of moving things.
Ecstasy. Dr. Morita felt like he’d received a revelation. One year earlier, on that night when Junichi had carried Kō Hō in, she had spoken of one of the secret arts of the Cheondoism: a sword dance that allowed the practitioner to fly up to thirty meters into the air.
Now he had seen that secret art with his own eyes. He tried to catch another glimpse of the woman’s ecstatic expression. Morita Masatake could not have foreseen that this spirit of inquiry would earn him a metaphorical harsh slap in the face. When he looked into Kō Hō’s eyes, they were no longer her own. They were Tatsumiya Yukari’s.
Kōda Shigeyuki desperately chased after Lieutenant Katō, who was drawing near the hall. The night birds obstructed him; he could scarcely advance. Mustering all his strength, he forced his way through the sea of wings and finally made it as far as the doors. By that time, Lieutenant Katō already had Yukari tucked under his arm. He was singing, still flying.
Shigeyuki clung to Katō’s leg. Katō seized the man of letters by the scruff of the neck with one hand and hauled him up into the air with Yukari.
Shigeyuki jumped up and hauled down Katō’s legs, trying to drag the Lieutenant back down to the ground. In defiance of his resistance, he flew higher and higher. Just as he was about to be carried off beyond the training hall grounds, Shigeyuki drew his short sword with one hand and brought it down on Lieutenant Katō’s arm.
A spray of blood splashed Shigeyuki’s face, and then he fell onto the tile-topped wall leading to the main gate. As he clung desperately to the tiles, Lieutenant Katō’s left hand, which had been clutching his collar, fell into the courtyard trailing blood.
Did I get him?! Shigeyuki thought as he scrabbled over the tiles.
Kō Hō lightly landed on the ground, took the severed left hand of Lieutenant Katō in her mouth, and then soared back up into the air. Her detour took only a few seconds.
Shigeyuki stared in blank amazement. All the fighting spirit had gone out of him. He watched Kō Hō fly off like the husk of a man who’d lost his soul.
Dr. Morita, Junichi, Kamo, and Yasumasa watched Lieutenant Katō and Yukari escape them, silent.
Shigeyuki heard a sonorous chant from Kawatake Mokuami’s Return Bridge, his kabuki adaptation of the Rashōmon legend:
Even if she take the form of a fair woman, her true nature
shall be that of an evil demon.
Didst thou not notice that, reflected in the moonlight,
her shadow was a strange ogre’s shape?
In a gale that hurls sand and stones aloft,
borne with it into the void,
the demon has vanished…
This must be the work of a demon.
A retainer watching from behind rushes in to seize him,
shouting that he should resign himself,
but he flings him off to the left and right,
his hair flying wildly, his face terrifying to behold.
Indeed, she truly was a demon.
The demon slipped away into the gathering clouds,
shone with a bright light, and vanished.
Those assembled in the garden had lost their fight with a demon.
Translator's Notes
The eboshi (烏帽子) is a traditional black-lacquered cap from Japan. It is historically associated with samurai and court nobles.
竜泉: Ryūsen means “dragon spring” or “dragon fountain.” It is a place name and there is a temple by the same name.
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