Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

office in Tonami, and responsible for the lives of seventeen thousand refugees. Weary warriors were reunited with their wives and children, and for a time their lot seemed to improve. It was summer, conditions were far cleaner and less crowded than at the camps they had left behind, and there were mushrooms to gather and fish to catch. But the exiled samurai of Aizu were not farmers, and as the weather turned colder the gravity of the situation became clear: not enough rice, no proper shelteror warm clothes. Supplies of firewood ran out. Porridge froze solid in the pot. The settlers dug for the roots of bracken under the snow, collected the seaweed that washed up on the shore, and tried to make meager stores of soybeans and potatoes last. The lucky ones ate dog meat.
    Hiroshi’s position did not help the Yamakawas’ plight; on the contrary, he led by example, putting the needs of his people before those of his family. Desperate to feed his mother and sisters, Hiroshi quietly negotiated with the local tofu dealer to buy okara , the pulpy by-product of tofu production often used as animal feed. When other samurai got wind of this humiliating arrangement, they forced Hiroshi to abandon his plan. An Aizu warrior did not eat fodder. Hiroshi expressed his despair only obliquely, in poetry:
    To those who ask of Tonami in the north,
    tell them this;
    It is a land before human time.
    Samurai training had not included any of the practical skills these harsh surroundings demanded, save one: endurance, stiffened by the strict code that had put the Aizu on the losing side in the first place. “If those scoundrels from Satsuma and Choshu ever hear that the Aizu samurai have died of starvation, they’ll ridicule us,” one father told his son. “Our domain will go down in infamy. This is a battlefield, do you hear? It’s a battlefield until the day Aizu wipes the stain from its honor.”
    In spite of cold and hunger, the exiles soon established a school for their sons, though the curriculum took a striking new direction. The boys now read the works of Yukichi Fukuzawa, an educational innovator and leading proponent of Western learning, chanting rhythmic couplets on world geography and history instead of Confucian philosophy. Taking his cue from the Western writers he was translating, Fukuzawa sorted the countries of the globe into categories: Savage, Barbarous, Half-Civilized, and Enlightened. “Although Europe is now without doubt the most civilized and enlightened continent in the world,” he wrote, “it was in a chaoticand ignorant state in the old days.” Japan might not be as enlightened as Europe, but at least it wasn’t savage, like Africa, and given time, there was hope for improvement.
    Western technology had helped the imperial forces win the war. It was clear to Aizu’s leaders what their sons needed to learn, but books did not fill hungry bellies. The refugees suffered from malnutrition, intestinal parasites, and anemia. Sutematsu, turning eleven, spent her days spreading nightsoil on the fields and looking for shellfish to contribute to her family’s meager meals.
    W ITH THE CESSATION of hostilities, the young Emperor Meiji and his court settled into new rhythms and rituals in their “eastern capital.” Townspeople reminded themselves to call their city Tokyo now, rather than Edo. Sutematsu’s second brother, Kenjiro, now sixteen, had managed to make his way there. Posing as a temple acolyte, he had escaped an Aizu prison camp under the protection of a monk. His exceptional academic ability soon attracted the patronage of sympathetic Choshu leaders, and for the next year, living under an alias, he was able to study, moving frequently when the rumor of his fugitive status resurfaced. Eventually he was able to settle in Tokyo, but his origins still counted against him, blocking his access to the most prestigious schools. Though there was less snow in Tokyo than in the wilds of Tonami, Kenjiro found himself nearly