1. The Night Market of Women

The Head Captain of the Shinsengumi, Kondo Isami, sat alone with his Vice-Captain, Hijikata Toshizou.

"Toshi," is what his Captain called him. They were discussing whether or not a certain man was to be slain. "What are we going to do about him?" he asked, thick with an accent of a Bushuu-Tama region native. Isami hailed from Kami-Ishiwara, while Toshizou was from Ishida Village, both places along the Koushuu Highway, less than 3 ri/12km apart. They were both rural areas where, in early summer, the overgrown thickets would smell of pit vipers.

Now, about "Toshi."

It was just after the end of spring and the beginning of summer in 1857 (Ansei 4), right as the snakes had finished their hibernation. It was at this point that the life of Toshizou, the youngest son of Kiroku, a farmer in Ishida-mura, underwent a great change.

Just like any other year, it was hot.

One evening, Toshizou left the village and headed straight down the Koushuu Highway, hurrying down the 2.5 ri/10km path that led to central Musashi.

His yukata was bound as tightly as possible.

He was tall. His shoulders were wide, his hips supple, and he walked with sturdy legs. Anyone with an eye for swordsmanship would be able to tell just from the way Toshi walked that he was no amateur.

His head was wrapped in a blue cloth bandanna, with tied ends that hung down fashionably to his chest.

He was stylish.

While the simple fact that he had fixed a face cloth up to his own liking would have been charming enough, the truth was, such a modification looked strangely good on him.

Speaking of style, his topknot was unusual as well. As the child of a farmer, he should have styled his hair normally with shortened sideburns, but even when he was only walking around town, he always tied it up in a peculiar fashion. And as if that wasn't outrageous enough, it mimicked that of an actual samurai.

Regarding this anomaly, the village headman Satou Hikogorou scolded him. "Know your place!"

Toshizou merely turned his eyes away and laughed. "What's the big deal? I'll eventually become a samurai, after all."

After that incident, he did not change his topknot, but did resort to wearing his bandanna. As a result, the villagers began to speak ill of "Toshi's politely overlooked topknot." Toshi's family were relatives of the Satou house, and so the village headman chose to pretend not to notice his odd hairdo.

However, it wasn't the bandanna, but the shining eyes beneath that were Toshi's best trait. Upon seeing his long, sharp eyes and their thick eyelids, the girls of the village would always make a fuss, whispering "...cool..." as he walked by.

However, the men of the village had a different opinion.

"Toshi always has this look in his eyes like he's up to something."

Indeed, this man was always up to something.

Even then, as he walked down the highway, he was secretly wearing a judo training gi underneath his yukata.

As he made his way out of the main town, an acquaintance called out to him from the fields.

"Hey, Toshi, where are you going?"

He didn't answer, though.

It's not like he could say that he was going to rape a woman.

Tonight was the Rokusha Myoujin Ceremony. In more colloquial terms, it was known as the Darkness Festival.

Toshizou's mission tonight was to take advantage of the darkness during the festival and sneak in. There, he would strip off the kimono of one of the girls visiting the shrine, push her down, and violate her. Then, he would take off his own yukata and lay it across the grass, moist with evening dew, to keep the woman from getting wet as she slept. The reason he was wearing a judo gi was for preparation in case a fight broke out between any male companions.

Toshizou wasn't the only criminal.

That was the nature of the festival.

The pilgrims who came to the temple this evening were not all from the central area. Many came from the villages of the Santama area, and some even from as far as Edo to spend the night. When the last lantern went out and the earth became swallowed up in heavenly darkness, men and women alike would revert to how their ancestors once lived, where anything one could get their hands on was fair game.

Gradually, flocks of lantern-carrying pilgrims heading to the Rokusha Myoujin Ceremony began noticeably increasing.

Toward the direction of Edo, the moon rose into the sky.

Beneath the moonlight, men and women alike held torches in their left hand, and green bamboo staves in their right, pressing forward while they beat out a strange rhythm. As it was the season when pit vipers came out, they smacked the road with the split ends of their bamboo sticks, in order to chase away the creatures as they continued to walk.

Toshizou also carried a bamboo stick, but that wasn't all it was. He had hollowed out the center and inserted metal into the cavity, making it as heavy as a steel pole.

It was more useful for intimidating humans that it was for pit vipers.

Around the neighboring areas, Toshizou was often called a "thorned hedge" behind his back. He was seen as a thorned being, who would cut anyone who dared to touch him. While this phrase was often used to refer to violent people, there is still the slang term "thorn-ass" that exists today in the Kobe area to refer to young deliquent males, which could mean that the phrase existed in various areas at the time.

Toshizou arrived just a little before 8:00 PM.

All along the six hundred buildings that lined the district, lanterns painted a crimson-brown color had been hung. Large paper lanterns on poles had been stuck in the ground along the elm trees that lined the road to the shrine, rendering the area so bright it seemed like daytime.

It was a night market of women, so to speak.

Toshizou eyed the women as he walked. A few times, he ran into women from the same village, who would move to pull down their sleeve, only to hear "Stop!" from the man, followed by a frightening glare. Toshizou had a strange habit of being shy, and had never once engaged in sexual intercourse with a woman from the same village. After all, a woman from the same village would someday talk of what happened. As a result, some people would say,

"Toshi is a prude."

Toshizou, for some reason, was extremely afraid of being made fun of in regard to any sort of impure affair.

It was just a bad habit of his. That's why there were also people who would say,

"Toshi is a cat."

While lewd individuals were considered to be dogs, cats were those who kept their private affairs from leaking to the public. The way Toshizou dealt with his sex life was not the end of it, however. He also resembled a ferocious, nocturnal animal who would not easily befriend humans.

But more than anything else, there was one particular reason why Toshizou did not want to have sex with a woman from the same village. He simply wasn't attracted to farm girls.

'A woman's social position is everything,' Toshizou thought. It wasn't about looks. This was something he sincerely believed in.

To women that were higher in the social stratum than he, Toshizou felt a charm so powerful it made him shake. Few men possess this sort of sexual appetite.

For example, when he slept with a virgin last winter.

She was a girl who belonged to a large Buddhist temple in Hachiouji, and as was customary, she was referred to as "Princess" by the followers there. Toshizou, just after hearing that and without ever laying eyes on the girl, decided that he wanted to sleep with her.

In order to meet her, he went on a sojourn to the temple, which was 2 ri from where he lived.

On this occasion, however, Toshizou was known by the inhabitants of Hachiouji as a 'pharmacist.'

Around this time in his life, he had been dabbling in selling medicine.

The truth was, while Toshizou came from a family of farmers, they received enough income to be seen as rich for the time, and so they were able to live comfortably without having to do business selling a secret medicine passed down through their family called "Ishida Powder," which was said to work with great efficiency on bruises and bone fractures.

One of the ingredients included a thorned type of grass similar to that of morning glory taken from the bed of the Asa River that ran through their village. This grass, after first being dried thoroughly in the sun on a hot summer day, would then be charred and ground up into powder, and finally fed to the sick with hot sake. It worked so well that it was bizarre. After the famous Ikedaya Incident that the Shinsengumi was later involved in, that Toshizou fed some of the powder to each injured man. It is said that after two days, all of the swelling of their bruises had disappeared, and their bodies felt as good as new.

Toshizou walked not only through Bushuu selling the Ishida Powder, but also Koushuu and Aishuu as well. In order to further his swordsmanship training as a boy, he would travel all around to dojos, trading medicinal healing for lessons.

During that time, Toshizou wandered through these areas many times. Later, when he had become famous for his activity with the Shinsengumi, numerous teachers such as Ogawa Keiji, master of the Shindou Munen Style in a dojo in Sakuramachi, Koushuu, would say things like:

"So Hijikata Toshizou was that pharmacist from Bushuu, huh? It doesn't surprise me one bit."

And thus, he was able to get into the Hachiouji temple through his accommodations as a pharmacist.

The temple's name was Senjubou.

The master took a liking to Toshizou, and said "Feel free to stay for a bit in the barn, and sell your medicine around town if you like." He still hadn't seen the girl yet, but carefully inspected the temple and its garden during the afternoon. The girl's quarters were in one of many other rooms located in the temple chamber.

The next day, he saw her before his eyes for the first time. She was sitting by the lake in the garden, feeding the fish and basking in the sunlight. It was there that Toshizou passed by and faced her.

She furrowed her eyebrows in suspicion.

That was to be expected.

With his blue cloth bandanna and silk-striped kimono tied with a ceremonious belt, one could only guess from his appearance that he was the eldest child of a village headman -- especially from the authority with which he carried himself. The medicinal box strapped to his work trousers underneath, though, made him seem like nothing more than a mere merchant. Yet what kept her from thinking that was the fact that this young man was carrying kendou equipment on his shoulders.

She had never seen such a haphazard guy as this before. And even stranger, the appearance of this man with his cool eyes somehow seemed to fit him.

'Who could he be?'

She watched him closely.

From Toshizou's point of view, the girl wasn't especially beautiful, but her small figure and docile aura met with his tastes.

But, he didn't even bow once.

No matter how much he may have liked women of high social standing, he was not the type of man to bow his head to a woman and shower her with courtesy.

He simply took three steps forward, and said a single word: "Soon."

'Soon, what?'

She looked at him as if to ask this question, but by then Toshizou had turned his back on her and was heading toward the temple gate.

That night, around midnight, Toshizou wet the storm shutter to the girl's room with urine and opened it without a sound. Whenever young men from the Bushuu-Tama area went to take women in the night, they always used this method to enter.

Two women were sleeping in the room.

The other one was the girl's nanny, and Toshizou went as far as crouching down beside the very pillow where she slept to ascertain she was unconscious.

After that, he sniffed the sleeping girl's breath. It was quiet and mild -- she too was sound asleep. Toshizou moved to the edge of her futon and slowly pulled it up, revealing the lower half of her body. He placed his fingers on both of her big toes and plucked them up. Keeping both of her legs in the air using only her toes was an extremely difficult task, but Toshizou knew this was the only way for things to proceed without her awakening.

Finally, her legs were spread innocently open across the futon. The girl was as receptive as a corpse. When she finally did awaken, it was already too late.

To Toshizou, however, the strange thing was that she did not clamor a bit. Aside from her body stiffening up, it did not seem like she was stifling a scream, and didn't attempt to make any sound at all.

--Soon.

Had she already realized the meaning of what Toshizou had said? Or rather, could it have been that she had been secretly waiting for a good-looking traveler like this to sneak up on her like this all along? In these parts, the noctural taking of women by men was not a rare occurrence.

In fact, it was Toshizou who began to despair, upon seeing the girl's surprising calmness. The next day, while hiding in the mulberry field behind the temple, he watched her in work clothes plucking mulberries and despaired even further.

'This is wrong,' he thought. She wasn't the girl he had imagined at all. If it was just a girl picking mulberries he had wanted, he could have found any number of those back in his own village. There would have been no reason to come all the way out here to Hachiouji. That evening, he headed home without even stopping at Senjubou before he left.

While it may seem a bit strange, this episode is a strong example showing just how much Toshizou lusted for a woman of high social standing.

To say that those who held high social standing was sacred to him would be an understatement. In the Bushuu-Tama region, which was completely under bakufu jurisdiction, there were nothing but temples and not a single samurai house -- which meant nothing but farmer girls that stunk of horse dung. Left with no other choice, Toshizou had won over the heart of a bell-shaker shrine maiden at from the Rokusha Myoujin Shrine in Fuchuu, and would sometimes sneak into the row house where she slept.

That night, with preparations for a ceremonial dance in a religious festival being held, he had expected not to see her. Despite that, however, he still intended to sneak into the rowhouse at daybreak anyway, just to see what he could find.

Once inside, he began looking for a woman. If a valuable-looking one appeared, he would blow out the lanterns, as was custom, and then sleep with her in the darkness.

However, not a single girl within appeared desirable to him.

'I want the daughter of a samurai house from Edo,' Toshizou thought, pacing underneath the lanterns in the forest near the temple grounds. 'Are there really none here?'

Two hours later, he began to search again. But of course, there was no reason a woman serving the shogun in Edo would want to come to such a chaotic festival.

While those visiting the temple did indeed make it chaotic, however, the truth was that the Rokusha Myoujin Shrine (now Ookunitama Shrine) had been the central shrine in Bushuu from long ago. As the quality of the festivals held there were also rather high, apparitors training to work as Shinto priests in Edo would often first be stationed here. That is how high this shrine's ranking was.

'I guess it's useless,' Toshizou decided, preparing to leave. Every time he had gone to search, he had received whisperings from a number of the farmer girl prostitutes lurking about, but he hadn't even looked them in the face.

As he trudged back through the shrine forest, he heard a loud cry. He assumed it was simply from the midnight taiko drums that accompanied the carrying of the portable shrine, he continued moving. Suddenly, all the lanterns went out at once, and he was surrounded by darkness.

Pure darkness.

Seeing nothing but the stars in the sky, the crowd of over 10,000 people held their breath as they waited for the male god shrine to be carried to the female god shrine. During this time, the sexual union between man and woman was to happen. All of the participants believed this was a holy act that would bring them prosperity.

Therefore, the men and women were shrouded in shadow, and uttered not a single sound. They feared the contamination of the might of Heaven. There were some virgins who simply kept standing as they were raped, and some wives of other men who were trampled in the mad stampede. But no matter what kind of woman it was, they all knew to keep quiet regardless of the circumstances.

Luckily for Toshizou, tonight, as the lanterns went out, there happened to be a woman standing next to him.

For some reason, she did not come toward him.

They were both standing in the forest, far from the main street where most of the crowd was clamoring. Since it had been dark to begin with, he hadn't initially noticed her shadow as he was moving, and doubted she had noticed him either. As he moved to embrace her, he was surprised by the soft feel of the silk kimono she was wearing.

'Just who is she?'

He inspected her garments with his hands, noticing four intricate layers that would be useless around here, even for the daughter of the village headsman. She also seemed to be carrying a sachet in her pocket, as Toshizou sniffed a fragrance he had never experienced before in his life.

"Who in the world are you?" he finally asked, breaking the rules and whispering.

But, the woman, clearly believing this to be a holy rite, shook her head and kept silent.

"Please tell me."

"I will not." She had a bright voice. On top of that, she was not speaking in a stronger Bushuu accent, but with a softer inflection.

"Do you mind?"

"No."

Toshizou pushed her down onto the grass and embraced her in a blinding rush, just like the first time he had ever known another woman. As he continued to embrace her, the fact that he was also embracing a new destiny to himself was, of course, unknown to the man.

'I don't get it.'

She was not a virgin -- and yet, she was dressed like one. As they continued, he quickly stole the brocaded purse containing her dagger out from her obi. As long as he had this, he would later be able to ascertain her class.

The woman did not notice. After they were finished, she fixed herself up and disappeared into the night. As the ceremony ended, and dawn began to fall upon the shrine, Toshizou went to sneak into Kozakura's room.

"Look at this," he said, showing the dagger to her.

It had an amazing texture, as smooth as seaweed, and inscribed on the hilt was the name Norishige. If it was the same Norishige as the famous one from Ecchuu, it meant that this was true rarity.

But Kozakura didn't give the dagger a single glance, instead holding the purse it was contained in up to the light.

"You joined with this person?" she asked in surprise. "I suppose so, if you have this."

"Yes. I can still smell the scent of her sachet on me."

"Are you familiar with this family crest?" Kozakura pointed to the chrysanthemum with five leaves, sowed in golden thread on the crimson fabric.

"Nope."

"This is the informal crest of the house of Chief Priest Sawatari in Ecchuu. You've really done it this time...I remember seeing this purse before. It belongs to Sawatari Sawatasu-sama's elder sister, Osae-sama."

"Is that so?"

Toshizou took the purse back into his hands, staring at the chrysanthemum crest as if he were about to eat into it.

Next: Slaying Rokusha