Perhaps that is what it means to be a father – to teach your child to live without you.
- Nicole Krauss, The History of Love


August 1915
Two weeks after the passing of Nishimon Uzui.


TENGENMON UZUI was two weeks in mourning and seven months away from home when the news came: his mother was dead, that it was pneumonia which took her life. He was so steeped in grief for his brother Nishimon that it was too early for him to feel anything: he'd been poisoned and brought back, eaten alive and thrown up, and the sadness would take time to settle down. He'd been beaten and tossed out; he still ached. Now, there was only pain. But Tengenmon Uzui knew that his tenure in this world had ended, and that he was needed on the other side. He left the city, split ways with Hinatsuru, and beyond the outskirts was a single dirt road, a wagon, a driver headed north. Soon he was inside. He mustered the fortitude to look at his image in the fogged window, and his head falls into his hands. It was time to go home.


SHINGENMON UZUI lay adrift in the bed of marble-like linen for five hours and thirty-seven minutes before he assembled the will to stand up. In a motion akin to a spring untwining, he gripped the golden bedposts, crunched his belly into itself, and launched himself onto his feet. The cavernous bedroom with its skinned walls and coarse stone floor shook with the action, and as the huge, naked man circled the room and officiated the rest of his morning routine it continued to tremble with the force of his footsteps. He took the candle out of the dressing table and lit it, then folded out his gold-laden mirror, assembled his silver razor and sandalwood-scented lather, and began to shave. When he was finished, he then whittled his nails and painted them, flossed his teeth with a single strand of the tail-hair of a Noma horse, and doused his face in white powder as to mitigate the wrinkles that fifty-one years of a life spent in hiding had carved in it. Then he slid into a golden silk gown, went to the only window of that room, and opened it, but he did not look outside. In his dispassionate trance he asked himself out loud, with a bored parsimony, why he'd woken up at all. Then he looked one more time in the mirror, at the lascivious white locks, the maroon eyes, and he remembered: that his son was coming home, that he was going to receive him.


Tengenmon Uzui stepped out onto the main square of Gozaisho Town and immediately the nostalgia came coursing through him. A departure of seven months returned to him as five-hundred years when he examined the plaza: he recounted the exact pattern of the sand drawn up by a criss-crossing population of three-hundred and sixty-seven people, the precise architectures of the nearby shops which he always saw but never entered. He had been through this square less than five times his whole life and yet everything came to him in perfect clarity. But it was only a while before Tengenmon surmised that it was not worth it to stand here and attempt to escape it anymore: he pulled his attention back onto the sight before him, and took it in:

The black, walled estate of Shingenmon Uzui.

The estate – of his father.


In an ironic gesture, the father met his son in the same room where they had departed each other seven months ago. In the auditorium of cream-coloured marble and lavish purple rug the father sat with his legs folded over each other on a leather couch that was stained and old. Opposite him, in the doorway, stood Tengenmon. He had his hands in his pockets. He looked tired and ugly. He was frowning.

"Nishimon's dead," the father said. "And you were too scared to come tell me. That's why you're only here now."

"How'd you know?"

"Because the only reason he wouldn't follow you to hell, here and back, was if he was."

Tengenmon doesn't answer. He keeps staring, scrutinising, and though he's scowling there is little emotion in his expression.

"Why not sit?" the father said, motioning to the chair parallel him.

"Don't feel like it," Tengenmon replied.

By such an astute reply the father was taken aback, but not shaken. He continued speaking, half to Tengenmon, half to himself.

"When I was younger…" he said. "I was just like you. I grew tired of the shinobi life, and when I was eighteen I ran away from home. And you know what it was for? To see the world."

"How long will this take?" Tengenmon asked.

"Not long. But maybe long enough you'll find it in your best interest to get a seat. So?" He pointed again to the chair, and Tengenmon relents. Now that they are both seated, Tengenmon leans forward, and the father slinks further into the couch.

"For… six months I roamed Japan. I went to Tokyo, Okinawa, Hokkaido, Shikoku, all these fancy places. All so different. It was the best six months of my life, and from time to time I find myself wishing to relive it. But on the seventh month I had already grown bored of this small country. The world out there – was so much wider. But to go see that world I needed money. So I turned to… unsavoury methods to get it. I robbed and killed and tortured and robbed some more. Then, one day, a man approached me. He must've only been two, three years younger than me. So, damn it, he wasn't a man, but the way that boy looked… he was as a demon. He said he knew who I was, and I said he couldn't have, but then he told he was from the Kenpeitai, the secret police, and I knew. He told me that, as a shinobi, I was an enemy of the state. So we fought."

"Who won?"

"Nobody won. He's still alive, I'm still alive. He was very strong. But by fighting him, a sixteen-year-old boy, I thought about where I was for a moment. If he – just a child – hated me so for a lineage which I'd tried so actively to escape, how would the rest of the world feel, if they knew? The wheels of doubt began to spin in me. But I was still infatuated with travel enough that I could push it aside. And I reckoned with myself that this hate of the shinobi only existed in Japan. So, I had an even stronger urge to leave."

"Then why didn't you?"

"Well it ain't a very exciting story. When the first Kenpeitai guy found me suddenly I couldn't go nowhere in peace. And it wasn't just the Kenpeitai chasing me anymore but the normal police. Somehow they managed to get my photo, and soon wanted posters of me started popping up everywhere. I was a vagabond. A nomad. I was also foolhardy. Many a time did I place my trust in people saying they'd take me over the ocean to China, Korea, Russia, whatever. But all of them betrayed me in the end, at the last moments turning me in. Escaping prison wasn't any problem for me, but by my fourth tenure I found that my desire to run had burned away. I was weak, and I had been broken. Then, in my cell one day, I received a letter. You can get letters in jail, did you know? It was from my brother. He had heard of my imprisonment. He told me that my father was dead, that it was an unknown affliction which took his life."

The father suddenly stops there, curls his fingers around each other, tightening, as if praying.

"My father was not a beautiful man, and I did not grieve for him. But when I broke out for the last time and arrived at Gozaisho a week later I saw that I was alone in my opinion. I walked into this same room and saw my siblings writhing on the floor, in their tears, their faces bloody and striped from how they scratched at it, like bitches. They had gone completely mad. The one… relatively sane brother who sent me the letter told me the situation: that my father had left a will, stating that I should become the next clan leader."

"And why were they like that?"

"Apparently, my siblings could not stand my father's decision, and the anger they felt from it was why they had gone mad so. Not even I know what was going through his head when he made it. And maybe my siblings were acting that way on purpose, to try an' scare me, to go away again. But I didn't. And soon they bunched up on me, strangling, clawing, biting, slathering. They wanted to kill me. They wanted to kill me because I was a foreigner come to take a position they felt was rightfully theirs. To them, I had become the very embodiment of the outside world. I... remember thinking, just for a second, only a second, maybe less, that I was the one at fault. I got arrogant and ran away. I thought the whole world was mine. But then I thought about these people, these fucking people, my own family turning on me for something as small as an inheritance of a position that means fuck-all – and I didn't even ask to be leader! – and the entire world hating me for something I didn't choose to be, I thought, that the only way for me to be free, was to carve my own position in this world."

"So?" Tengenmon said, getting impatient. "What happened next? What's the climax?"

"I killed them. I killed them and I tossed their ugly bodies in the river and that was that. I became clan leader, and in doing so I solidified my position on this earth."

"And why," Tengenmon asked. "Why're you telling me all this?"

The father calms, and for the first time he smiles, gracefully, wickedly.

"I wondered if you have come to do the same to me."


Trivia: a profile of Gozaisho Town

Established in 1681.

Has been a centre for shinobi activity since at least the early 1700's.

The Uzui clan settled there in 1734, joining twenty plus others.

Nowadays, only the Uzui and Bishamoto (female-only) clans remain.

The townspeople are loyal to the shinobi, and don't divulge their existence nor business to the public. Thus, how they've managed to avoid the government eye for so long.

In 1883, a wave of rabies swept through the town after a rabid dog bit six people before being put down.

Four months later, five unrecognisable bodies were discovered washed up on the banks of the nearby river. Around the same time, The Uzui clan mysteriously went silent.

Trivia: Shingenmon Uzui's wanted poster

WANTED: SHINGENMON UZUI, DEAD OR ALIVE.

Man in his late teens or early twenties. Silver hair. Fuchsia eyes. See attached photo for features. Strong figure. 190 – 195 cm tall. 80 – 90 kg. Talks with a central accent. Carries around a bronze dagger. Last seen in Dejima District, Nagasaki.

REWARD DEAD: 50 Yen.

REWARD ALIVE: 75 Yen.

(Signed) Yamada Akiyoshi 山田顕義

Dated: 23 March 1883


Tengenmon Uzui was so engrossed and so uncannily immersed in his father's story that afternoon that, when he awoke that night from troubled dreams to find the Uzui estate still as the star of Jupiter that lingered in the sky, only then did he realise that neither the topic of Nishimon nor his mother had passed their lips once.

The room he had retired to was dilapidated and oily. Tengenmon had been quartered in what was Bishamon's former lodging, for since he was the favourite he had been allowed to take up accommodation in the house proper. But as he lay there now between the bent floor and unfamiliar ceiling he felt no relation to this place, no sensation that it ever belonged to that faraway brother. Tengenmon's eyes trailed the tables placed against the walls and saw that they had been emptied, and then he realised the hook on the door – that resting over normally would be a headband, one of the few items of vanity they were allowed to have – was bare. It only made sense, that Bishamon took his possessions to the grave. Yet still the sight of it made Tengenmon's heart yearn inexplicably, for old days that he did not wish to go back to.

But he would not be a slave to sentimentality.

Minutes later Tengenmon's given in, and roaming the halls of the coveted Uzui estate the memories of a life he'd hoped to forget during his time in Hiroshima comes back to him. It was the hour at which night was darkest, but a full moon made the house an easy one to search. He made his way through the complex and opened every door he came across, went through every draw, cupboard, shelf, each uncovering some new memory, and he would have stopped if not for the occasional pleasant recollection that would occur to him out of the many unpleasant. Here – was where his brother Ketsumon used to stay. Here was where Nezumon succumbed to his sickness. Here was where Bishamon sparred with Ōyamon once, and here was where Ōyamon died from his injuries a few days later. Here was the room their father confronted Haemon in after learning of his plans to kill him – and nobody was to tell what they saw after that – and here…

Was his mother's room.

The only locked one.

But a match and a hairpin and a dangerous curiousity would render it not, and soon, Tengenmon Uzui peered inside.


Tengenmon Uzui remembered his mother as a woman too compliant to his father who he could have never said he was fond of, and perhaps that is why he could not find it in himself to mourn her come news of her death. She was meek, dull, soft-boned, languid and boring, and of a height that when observed next to her husband she appeared a daughter to her father. But she must've been strong, to bear nine children and watch them all go one by one, or just resourceful in hiding what she truly thought, as a life spent under his father would've taught anyone.

And her room was just as plain as she: its walls were whitewashed and spotless, the floor covered by rush mats that were battered but kept in neat, plank-like order, by some arcane principle of cleanliness. Despite this, strewn atop her various dressing-tables were flasks of perfume, dishes of powder, brushes to apply lipstick, sponges to take it off, a few combs, many mirrors, and some more. It became apparent to Tengenmon that the room had not been cleared out yet, and thus – even he did not know what drove him to do so – he started to scour it.

Of course, his father had gotten to it before him. Anything the man might've deemed unfit for his son to see had been removed, be it mementos of those who had come before him, or personal articles of value such as rings, necklaces, bracelets, that some invisible entity in his mind had made him too paranoid to leave out in the open. So Tengenmon found nothing, because he was looking for nothing and because there was nothing; but before he left, he resolved that at the very least he ought to tidy the room as a minimum way to pay his respects. So he categorised the combs, set aside the sponges, filed the flasks and organised the powders and the brushes. He made her bed and straightened her blinds; he dusted off the tabletops and put the mirrors in their place. But, while correcting the rush mats he discovered weren't so uniform after all, he found it: a box, embedded in the floor and hidden under a section of carpet.

And inside this box was a packet of Wisteria, a letter.

And inside this letter – was a revelation.


Trivia: medicinal properties of Wisteria floribunda (Japanese Wisteria)

Wisteria floribunda has long been used to treat low to medium level inflammation of the extremities (by diluting the sap and applying it as an ointment to the site of inflammation) due to the anti-inflammatory compound betulin found in it. However, present throughout the plant and in large concentrations in the seed pod is the highly toxic glycoside wisterin. That is why, in addition to being an anti-inflammatory agent, Wisteria has found a niche as a poison, both in demon and human warfare.


"Now that you're a man… and believe me when I say you're a man… I need to straighten out a few things. Firstly, congratulations. Out of nine competitors you came through. You're the last one left, so that makes you the next Uzui patriarch. Secondly, what were you doing last night?"

"Nothing," Tengenmon replied. "Just nothing."

Come morning and come breakfast and Tengenmon and his father are having their meal that nobody knows who prepared in a room that nobody knows who belonged to. They're sitting parallel to each other at a long ivory table, holding in their hands gleaming silver cutlery opened just for that occasion, and they're silent, save for the occasional offhand comment, or clang of crockery.

"Really?" the father said. "I don't get eyebags like that after a full night's sleep. But maybe you're different. By the way, I've been meaning to ask, why'd Nishimon run off, anyway?"

Tengenmon freezes with his chopsticks halfway raised, food on his tongue partly chewed, and he makes no effort to hide his shock.

"I just wanna know," the father said, taking glee in the sight. "Isn't it normal for a father to be interested in the affairs of his children?"

"He left…" Tengenmon started. "He left because he wanted to be free. Don't know what from."

"Come on. Don't you have anything better than that?"

"No, I do not."

The father, who had his head perched over the table in anticipation, pulled back into his seat. Then he took out another cigar and lit and puffed it and he watched as the smoke rose into the granite ceiling, disappearing.

"Aren't you going to ask me about Bishamon?" the father said.

"What's there to ask?"

"Well, something like why I'm such a horrible man and why I'm such a terrible father and why I sent one of my three remaining children to his death."

"Already know the answers."

"No, you don't. You're just keeping yourself stubborn 'cause you're pissed with me. You're like a bitch in heat. But I won't prod you. Instead, I'll tell you something."

Then the father leans closer, and smiles like a demon.

"It was I who killed your mother, and it was I who killed Nishimon."


Trivia: the letter Tengen uncovered hidden in his mother's floor / Nishimon's instructions upon being turned into a demon

Nishimon Uzui,

Begin searching for Nisegami Youma. He has been implanted into the body of the demon slayer Giyuu Tomioka. The demon slayers are after a killer in the Hiroshima red-light district – whether or not this is a demon or human is unclear – and it is likely Tomioka will be sent after him next. You will impersonate the killer. Do not worry whether your impersonation will be successful or not. Informants have told us that the police only plan to release public information on the killer in three days' time, which should coincide with the time you arrive in Hiroshima. Therefore, rendering a problem in the timeframe unlikely. You only need to fool the public, not the demon slayers. If the demon slayers find you interfering in their business they will come after you anyway. Whether or not they send Tomioka after you or the actual killer is a matter of chance. If it is not you, then seek him out. If it is, then let Tomioka be drawn to you. Injure him severely to force Youma to possess and heal him. Then, convince him to join our side. If that fails, incapacitate him and bring him to [blotted out]. If you are captured, remember that the Demon Slayers will be uncompromising in their torture of you. You will find a packet of wisteria extract attached in the envelope. Ingest it, and it will kill you. Use it as a last resort. But be careful, for it is as equally toxic to humans as it is to you. Good luck.

Trivia: extract from a traveler's account of his stay in Gozaisho Town, dated July 29th, 1915

I ran out onto the square and joined the rest of the crowd to listen. There it came again: the screams of a woman, the kind that sent shivers through me, ripping into the air. I gulp, when I realise the source: the Uzui estate. The screaming continues for a while, with several breaks in them in which one could hear things like 'I won't let them have him!' and 'where'd you hide it?!' uttered. Gradually the shouting dies down and I couldn't tell if it was because she'd shredded her throat or if it was because she was giving in to whatever was trying to take her, until finally it goes quiet altogether. I look all around me, and I'm appalled when I see it: the people around me are doing nothing…


November 1914
One month before the test on Mount Gozaisho.
Transcript of a conversation between Shingenmon Uzui and Nishimon Uzui:


Do you love your brother, Nishimon?

I do.

Would you be willing to die for your brother, Nishimon?

I would.

I would too. And that's why I'm about to tell you something special.

Okay.

A man named Nisegami Douma has approached me with news that he is looking for somebody, and that he is in need of a person who is trained in the good art of reconnaissance. I have chosen you to go. He has also told me someone was supposed to have approached you already.

…Someone has. But why not send Bishamon?

Because in a month Bishamon'll be dead, that's why. And you'll be the one to kill him. Douma told me. Anyway, he offered me 1,000 Yen for your services. But that ain't the reason I accepted it. It's because I think, this is the best kind of test a dad can give his boy.

…But I don't want to go.

Haven't I been teaching you all these years saying no ain't an option? It's a man's duty to take every opportunity that lands on his plate, no matter how much food he already has! And lemme tell you something more: you're the favourite for clan leader, not Bishamon. And that brother of yours you love so bad? He's at the bottom of the list. By the looks of it I'm going to have to cut him out soon. But if you… return successfully from this mission… I promise you…


"I'll give up my position, and make Tengenmon leader!"


July 1915

Nishimon Uzui's final words to Tengenmon Uzui:


"I only wanted for you to become the head. I only wanted for you to be safe. That is why I left. That is why I will not come back. If both of us go home it will definitely be the end for you, Tengen! As long as two of us remains there will always be another 'test'. So promise me, promise me this…"

"…that you will kill that man, Shingenmon Uzui!"


I'll kill him.

That monster.

That monster –

Who took him away from me.


I didn't know what was going through your head, father, when you spilled everything to me that day. Like a rabid dog who couldn't keep the foam from coming out his mouth. But I'm grateful, because it was then for the first time that I saw the truth:

That you are a rotten, ugly man –

A man who sold the souls of his children to preserve his irredeemable own.

That in the end, the earth you taught to me to fear was kinder to me than you ever were –

An earth so wide, so free.

That Nishimon died because it was you who orchestrated it and not the world!


"Huh? What's this, Tengenmon?"

"Tea. For you, father."

"Really? You're catching on to your duties as heir apparent nicely. But, tell me one thing…"

"Hmm?"

"Why – is it purple?"


SHINGENMON UZUI: FINALE


SHINGENMON UZUI lay splayed on the floor for five hours and thirty-seven minutes before he assembled the will to move. In a motion akin to a wrapper unkinking, he straightened the legs that had buckled and folded over each other, placed his palms against the ground to steady himself, and pushed. But again his body crumpled, and again he lapsed back into his medicinal trance, breathing, just breathing, for he would not be allowed to die yet.

TENGENMON UZUI sat still a few metres from where Shingenmon had collapsed. The tea in his hands had grown cold, but he neither drank nor put it down. He kept a locked glare on Shingenmon, but out of refusal to meet his eyes he stared only in the approximate direction of the man, as if trying to intimidate him, as if trying to keep him down as long as he would be allowed too. But soon Shingenmon was up again; clawing at the tables, gripping the legs of the chairs, trying to pull himself on his feet. This time something stirred him. He was halfway standing when he froze and examined the room with a dangerous look, before his eyes fell on Tengenmon once more:

"Do you hear that?" he said. "Water. The sound of it. Where's it coming from?"

There was a river nearby, but whatever noise that must have been coming from it was imperceptible to Tengenmon. But to Shingenmon it was maddeningly audible. The perpetual thundering of it against the valley rocks was amplified by his expiring state and so became part of his turmoil.

"The fucking water!" he roared. "If I could only stop it for a moment!"

But no: he could no longer stop the flow of torrents. Shingenmon came to realise that the enduring and passionate battle between his vices and his fortune was reaching its close, and so with a final force of will he hauled himself onto his beating feet and ran wherever they wished to take him. He spilled the jug that held inside it the Wisteria-laced tea that now in turn held in its liquid hands his life, and toppled into the foyer in which no–one but he passed through. He scaled the iron gate that sealed the existence he so treasured and yet he so vehemently tried to flee now that it would not have him, and he managed to make it to the square of the town that had been waiting its entire inanimate life to receive him before he fell once again, into a spot of water.

There was a moment of darkness, before Shingenmon Uzui became humanised and his breathing calmed and the pain that was tearing his body went away. He examined the world around him with the clairvoyance of his last day, and for the first time he saw the truth: the perversely concerned faces of the crowd that circled him, the pitiful puddle in which he lay that refused to reflect his image, the heartless disdain of Tengenmon Uzui who was fluttering out his grip like dust through a crack. Then he rolled over on his back and embraced the sky, the heaven that would inevitably reject him, and he saw through his own window of clouds the sun that beat down impartially on all, the jewel of Saturn that was always judging, truly, the world that was not his.


Nishimon Salvo, end