"Life and love in their fullness were always possibilities just beyond his reach, mirages that disappeared when he reached for them. Was this his reward for killing someone for daring to seize those very things?"
Retribution , Chapter 9
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"I heard my nephew is back on rotation," Shimada Juubei said to Seibei as the two middle-aged samurai walked together down the wide corridors of the Shimada estate.
Seibei answered his older brother, "Yes, Kanbei is back from the front and will be here for another four months unless duty calls earlier. Has he not come to pay his respects to you?"
Juubei was as silent as the moonlight streaming through the shutters, but Seibei knew the answer. The last time Juubei saw Kanbei was when Kanbei set his cousin Shizuka's sword before him. That was a year ago.
Shimada Seibei father sighed. "I will tell him to come pay his respects to you and his aunt."
"Please do not force him, dear brother," Juubei came to a halt near an open lattice window. "Tell him, my wife and I do not blame him for Shizuka's death. My daughter did wrong. She was punished. Kanbei did his duty. We forgive him. Tell him to feel no shame before us. If anyone should feel shame, it should be my wife and I. But the daimyo has been gracious and did not impute the crime of one to our whole family. Or it would have gone ill for all of us."
Seibei too paused his step, looking out the window at the clear night sky. "We have already conveyed your generous thoughts to Kanbei many months ago, but the shadow lingers over his soul."
"So I have heard," Juubei glanced up at the stars, "That the dark mood does not lift from him."
Seibei sighed. For a while the two high-ranking retainers of the Aokuma clan stood in thoughtful silence, gazing at the full moon above. Then Juubei spoke, "Perhaps it is time to find my nephew a wife. Someone of cheerful disposition. She might cure his unhappiness."
"We already gave Kanbei the new arrival in the clan to be his orderly," Seibei replied, "The boy Shichiroji was chosen for his cheerful disposition. From what I've heard, he has proven a good servant over the past 6 months. Yet his presence does not seem to lift Kanbei's mood by much."
"A wife would be different," Juubei insisted. "I heard the daughter of Colonel Hasegawa is a kind soul and of vivacious nature. As yet, she is still unengaged. It might not be a bad match. Colonel Hasegawa is the maternal cousin of the daimyo."
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And so, before a week had passed, the matchmaker Onaka came to visit the Shimada estate. The wife of Shimada Seibei received the guest in one of the private tearooms, and a servant was sent to summon her son.
Shimada Kanbei, with his mother sitting beside him, listened patiently as the matchmaker rattled off a seemingly interminable list of personal details about a woman he had never met.
"Hasegawa Chihiro, supply officer with Platoon 2, 6th Support Company, rank Lieutenant. 26 years old. Height: 5 foot 10 inches…."
After the long recitation was over, the young man was still quietly unresponsive. His mother looked anxiously at her son, and Onaka shifted her gaze from mother to son, and back again, upon which Mrs Shimada finally spoke. "You already know Chihiro's brother Masao. Your aunt has discreetly interviewed Miss Hasegawa's subordinates. The lady seems to be well-liked by those under her command. There were no major complaints about her temper or character. Miss Chihiro does not seem to be a harsh mistress and would most likely not be a shrewish wife… if you have no objections, perhaps we can arrange a short meeting."
The young man bowed his head in polite assent.
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As Kanbei emerged wearily from the meeting with the matchmaker, a cheerful blond 16 year old bounded up him.
"Have you ever met Chihiro-dono?" The young orderly asked.
"No," Kanbei replied.
"Well, her brother is handsome, so she can't be too ugly," Shichiroji said encouragingly. "Are you excited to meet her?"
"It would be my duty to meet with her." The young officer spoke without emotion.
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Within three days, Onaka had made an appointment to visit to the Hasegawa household. And so it came to pass, before the week was over, that a tall, slim young woman sat patiently in the sitting room of the Hasegawa estate, listening to the matchmaker reciting a list of personal trivia about a man she had never met.
"Shimada Kanbei, 26 years old, Air Force Major with the Allied Forces' 5th Squadron. Should be due for a promotion soon. He is the son of Lieutenant Colonel Shimada Seibei and Captain Shimada Satomi…"
The lady's mother sat beside her, nodding encouragingly at the matchmaker Onaka. Kneeling some distance behind the highborn samurai maiden was her handmaid. This young woman from a lower-ranking samurai family was dressed after the manner of a warrior, her battle-scarred face appropriately impassive and her large eyes modestly downcast. But if one had looked closely, one might have seen a flash of anger in those dark brown eyes when the matchmaker praised the virtues of the handsome young Shimada Kanbei.
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Author's Comments:
In the Retribution universe, the Great War was waged between the states allied with the shogun and the states loyal to the emperor. Each state was ruled by a military government (the samurai clan) which maintained its own forces for internal defense. But each clan had to contribute troops to the combined forces. The combined army for the states on the shogun's side is called the Forces of the Allied Provinces, or Allied Forcess, for short. Kanbei is in the Allied Forces. The other side is the Confederated Prefectures. In companion fic Wolf Warriors, Mizuho, Ayame and Kyuuzou went straight into the Army of Confederated Prefectures. They were never affiliated with a clan. Their samurai senpai Haruko went into the Confederated Army through her clan, and then brought her 3 commoner kouhai in.
Notes and Inspirations:
- This is a companion fic to Unforgiven. Part of the Retribution series.
The social structure in this fic is partly influenced by the samurai and partly by Chinese military history.
The female soldier in East Asian tradition:
A military man using a female family member as an aide or a second-in-command was not unheard of in medieval Chinese and Japanese military history. For example, General Qin Liangyu of the Ming Dynasty was at one time her husband's second-in-command. Shen Yunying of the Ming Dynasty assumed command of her father's troops after he was killed in battle. The Imperial Court officially gave Shen her father's rank and responsibilities. In most instances, the East Asian woman warrior is reporting to a male family member as a subordinate, as in the case of Tomoe, wife of Yoshinaka and one of his sub-commanders. (Tomoe is arguably the most famous samurai woman – a great warrior not just by women's standards, but by general standards.) But in rare cases, the woman's career exceeds those of her husband and brothers - General Qin had command of both her older and younger brothers. Going further back in the history of both Japan and China to the ancient era, one would find more instances of female supreme commanders who led campaigns, e.g. Empress Jingo and Empress Fuhao.
So in this story, both Kanbei's mother and his intended wife are military officers, though lower-ranking ones. Chihiro is a supply officer from a support unit; she is not a combat soldier. Samurai women, although trained in the martial arts, typically did not go into battle as combat soldiers. However, all clan members, male or female, were expected to fight if the clan was under attack. (See Secrets of the Samurai, Ratti/Westbrook) Still, the role of women as combatants, for the most part, is defensive. Likewise, Chinese female troopers usually fulfilled support roles such as maintaining supplies, building traps/weapons or holding the fort. But there are exceptions, such as Qin, Shen, Tomoe, and many more women, who led combat troops.
The warrior-maidservant ( female soldiers are often not alone among men):
- As for a ranking military woman having maidservants serving as aides/orderlies, I was inspired by both legend and history. A documentary I saw on Tokugawa era contained an account of a woman of the samurai class taking an assignment to serve in a higher-ranking samurai household (but not as a soldier). In the Chinese legend of the Yang family with its numerous female generals, the household maids were trained in the martial arts and functioned as a private army. Historical female commanders, including rebel commanders born outside the military class, may lead male troops but their closest companions were often female soldiers. The rebel leader Wang Cong'er, by no means the only female supreme commander in the long history of the White Lotus Sect, commanded men but she was also accompanied by female troopers. These women warriors committed suicide with Wang and her male co-commandant when they were finally surrounded by government forces and defeat was inevitable.