Teito Monogatari:
The Tale of the Imperial Capital
Part 1: Great Spirit of Tokyo
Author: Hiroshi Aramata
Part 6: Those Who Command Shinigami
Chapter 28: Two Grandsons
At last the long initiation ceremony ended. Lieutenant Katō looked over at the German beside him with his usual characteristically cold expression. He had been promoted to First Lieutenant a year earlier.
Two or three young men approached the guests from the rear, all of them dressed in the same unusual manner.
"Mr. Katō, how are things lately with the Japanese police? Are they keeping a sharp eye on continental exiles?"
"Mr. Rin, you'd better be careful. Just the other day, a great many Korean soldiers were arrested. Korea's national independence movement is destined to be crushed. Next it will be the Chinese agitators they turn their eyes on. Japan is clearly set on colonizing the entire continent."
Mr. Rin smiled. "It's all right. We are united, and our cause is just."
Here in this place, fighters who had come from China, Korea, and Manchuria were gathered together for a common purpose. Most members of the Triad were Chinese students studying abroad, but there were also Korean Cheondoists among them. Cheondoism had split off from a revolutionary society that venerated the heretical religion formerly known as Tonghak.1 This building had a mystical air about it. It seemed like a place where magic might really happen.
Why Lieutenant Katō, a distinguished member of the Japanese Army, maintained friendships with such lawless rabble was incomprehensible to Mr. Haushofer.
Lieutenant Katō introduced three Triad members to the German: Rin Inmin of Seijō University, Rin Kōjin of Nihon University, and Rin Kaku, who was a man of letters at Keio University. All were students from Fujian Province in China. They were young men who had devoted their lives to the democratic revolution of their homeland.
The Japanese police were on edge over the movements of foreign students. They sent spies into universities, even, including Waseda University, which was led by former Prime Minister Ōkuma.
China’s secret societies originally had as their purpose the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the restoration of a Han dynasty. However, once the island nation of Japan made its intention to colonize the continent blatant, their efforts turned away from the Qing and toward Japan.
“Mr. Haushofer,” Lieutenant Katō called out to the German man. He related the current state of affairs in mainland China to him.
"Recently, two Suns have appeared on the scene. One is named Sun Yat-Sen, the star of China’s recent revolution. With the support of the two leading figures, Ōkuma and Inukai, he raised the signal fires of revolution under the name Sun Wen and declared the independence of East Asia.2
"The other is Sun Byeong-hui, the current leader of the Cheondoist movement. He inherited that leadership from the Tonghak Party that rose up in Korea at the end of the last century.3 He has set his sights on curing intractable diseases and bestowing happiness on people. Cheondoism blends Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity, and is a mystical ideology. Sun Byeong-hui has recently strengthened his anti-Japanese stance and has begun rites to curse Japan."
In Meiji 38 (1905), after the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan made Korea a protectorate. "Protectorate" sounded good in theory, but in practice, Korea became a Japanese colony. Japan seized Korea’s diplomatic rights and then took over everything administrative including judicial authority and police powers.
When Koreans carried out railway sabotage in protest, reckless ordinances were promulgated. One stated that a village where an incident had occurred would be held responsible. The entire village's population was punished for the actions of a few rebels.
Korean secret societies were united in their belief in Cheondoism. Japan gave them all a convenient target to fight. They planned the assassination of Hirobumi Itō, the first Resident-General of the government, who was Japan's symbolic presence in Korea. 4
For its part, Japan began a major crackdown on bandits and dissidents lurking within the Korea. Tensions were high in the eastern part of the world.
Karl Haushofer, a soldier from Germany, had different opinions about the conflict than the native Asians did. He hailed from Bavaria originally and was a General Staff Officer in the German Army. For his early years of service, he'd been stationed in Munich. Over the course of twenty years, he'd traveled to India, Tibet, East Asia, and Siberia, and had witnessed countless mysteries of the Orient firsthand.
The true purpose of his travels was to incite nationalist independence movements in various places and secretly weave conspiracies against Britain, which was colonizing the world at a rapid rate. He willingly mingled with locals and took part in their customs and religious rituals to win people to his cause. It was his opinion that only Japan of the globe's eastern nations was strong and stable enough to stand up to the British Empire.
Mr. Haushofer believed this entirely. Therefore, when he was ordered to enter Japan under the pretext of performing a military survey, he rejoiced. This was a terrific opportunity. He vowed to witness with his own eyes the secret of the strength of the Japanese Army and Navy that he had heard about only in rumors.
The mission entrusted to him was to improve German-Japanese military cooperation and to exclude British influence from Japan as much as possible. To do that, he had to smash the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The timing of the Russ-Japanese War proved unfortunate, since Japan called upon all its allies to strengthen itself in the conflict.
From Karl Haushofer's perspective, Russia was a great Asian power. It had never been fully included under the European label. Japan and Russia, two countries that in principle should have cooperated against the British Empire, had instead split Asia between them and weakened one another. Over time, Karl Haushofer feared that this conflict would have an adverse affect on East Asia and make it easier for the British Empire and other colonizers to invade. Japan had taken loans from Britain during the war, and the alliance was more solid than ever before.
In 1909 (Meiji 42), the year he landed in Japan, circumstances were beginning to change. Friction between Japan and the United States had flared up due to immigration issues. If Japan-U.S. relations became hostile across the Pacific, then even Britain, desperate to mediate, would be forced to declare which side it supported.
Britain would inevitably choose the United States. Japan, for its part, would have its path of immigration to America cut off and would turn its eyes toward East Asia. He predicted that Japan would advance into Manchuria on the basis of keeping peace with Russia. Korea was made a protectorate, as he'd anticipated. Japan was stepping into the role of promoting East Asian interests on the world stage.
Karl Haushofer had set foot on Japanese soil as an agent to steer the situation precisely in that direction. But he had not come to this small island solely out of his sense of duty as a soldier. He was also a mystic, and he had always been deeply captivated by secret arts and magic.
Having landed in Japan, he had been drawn into the world of secret societies.
He had long wished to join a secret society and learn the secret arts of the East. He happened to meet Lieutenant Katō, a master of Japanese magic beyond anything he had hoped for, who had greeted him warmly on behalf of the Japanese Army. Lieutenant Katō had promised to let him join the most noteworthy secret society in Tokyo: the Green Lodge.
His initiation ceremony was happening today.
"Mr. Haushofer," Lieutenant Katō called out to the German soldier once more. He said that he would now conduct the greatest secret rite, completing tonight's ceremony.
"The secret rite of Ichibodō," Rin Kaku said. He was a strikingly handsome young Chinese man with a bright and enthusiastic voice.
Lieutenant Katō slowly nodded. Ichibodō was the name of a particularly secret society of China. It was a Buddhist-affiliated group that worshipped Maitreya Bodhisattva. They performed sacred rites to meet the Bodhisattva in person, crossing the gate of death and obtaining visions of the future. Lieutenant Kato was extremely privileged to be a member of that secret society. No one else present was.
Katō burned incense unhurriedly. As purple smoke writhed and crawled across the ceiling, he took out a small seed and placed it in the center of the room. Then he pressed his palms together and made a strange gesture. His eyes opened wide, and then he prayed.
Karl Haushofer could not understand the words of this prayer. Every member of the secret society prostrated themselves on the rice mat floor and offered prayers in the same manner.
The small seed's shell split open, and then a pale blue sprout slid out from the crack. Soon that sprout became a thick stalk that stretched up toward the ceiling and then split in two. The twin stalks became vines that crawled all around the room, clinging to the walls. Green leaves grew thickly, sealing off the space around them.
Karl Haushofer, trembling, kept staring at the vines and did not look away. As the secret society members continued chanting their prayers, a face rose up within the vines: the face of Maitreya Buddha.
"Maitreya!" Karl Haushofer cried out involuntarily.
Maitreya was the future Buddha, who would descend to earth five billion six hundred and seventy million years after the first Buddha's passing into nirvana. He would save the suffering masses of the world--all of them, without exception.
The voices of prayer turned into screams, and the gigantic face floating opened both eyes wide. Those eyes expressed deep compassion. This was the Buddha who would overthrow the evil rampant on earth and guide all people to enlightenment.
Mr. Haushofer recoiled, struck by the blazing flame of hatred lodged deep within those enormous eyes. How could a Bodhisattva of compassion be capable of expressing such loathing?
The secret society members stopped screaming and prayed again.
Matreiya Buddha's eyes closed.
Translator's Notes
1 Tonghak
("Eastern Learning") is an indigenous Korean religion and social movement
founded by Ch’oe Cheu in 1860, later known as Ch'ôndogyo. It emerged as a
counter-movement to Western influence ("Western Learning") or Catholicism,
preaching that "Man is God" (In nae ch'ôn) and emphasizing equality. Tonghak
led a massive peasant rebellion in 1894, acting as a catalyst for the
Sino-Japanese War.↩
2 Sun Yat-sen
(12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925) was a Chinese physician, revolutionary,
statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republic of China (ROC)
and its first political party, the Kuomintang (KMT). As the paramount leader
of the 1911 Revolution, Sun is credited with overthrowing the Qing dynasty
and served as the first president of the Provisional Government of the
Republic of China (1912). ↩
3 Cheondoism grew out of the peasant
revolt of the Tonghak Party in Korea in 1894. ↩
4
Prince Hirobumi Itō (16 October 1841 –
26 October 1909) was a Japanese statesman who served as the first prime
minister of Japan from 1885 to 1888. Itō held office again as prime minister
three times between 1892 and 1901. After the Russo-Japanese War, the ensuing
Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 made Itō the first Resident-General of Korea.
Despite initially supporting a protectorate rather than outright annexation
of Korea, pressure from the Imperial Japanese Army leadership and the
failure of his gradualist approach contributed to his support for
annexation. Itō resigned as Resident-General in June 1909 only to be
assassinated four months later by Korean independence activist and
nationalist An Jung-geun in Harbin, Manchuria. ↩
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