The old man had no answer. He had written the inventory of that gate—cedar and cypress, four hundred years old, the carved chrysanthemum of the imperial family still visible beneath the peeling lacquer.
Kazuo closed his eyes. The garden was silent except for the distant clatter of a tram and the cry of a crow. He opened his eyes and picked up a brush. With swift, certain strokes, he wrote: harakiri y seppuku
“At a factory? Packing fish?” Kazuo finally turned. His face was young—thirty at most—but his eyes held the exhausted fury of a caged hawk. “My father cut open his belly in 1945 rather than see an American general walk through his gate. He did it with a broken tanto, alone, in a toolshed. No second. No kaishakunin to end his suffering. He bled for twelve hours.” Kazuo’s voice cracked. “And now I am to sell the gate itself for scrap?” The old man had no answer
“Then speak it one last time,” Kazuo replied. “And after I am gone, you may forget it. But I will not forget it. I will carry it through the gate.” At the second hour of the morning, Taro arrived. He wore a clean cotton kimono, his hair pulled back in a severe knot. Under his arm, wrapped in a faded blue cloth, was a katana. He did not bow to Kazuo. He did not need to. They had been boys together, had stolen persimmons from the shrine garden, had watched Kazuo’s father die in a toolshed because no one would grant him the dignity of a quick end. The garden was silent except for the distant
“Then write one now,” said the old man, who had seated himself on the veranda, his legs numb from the cold.