Whatcha doin’?” Sano asked. Chokichi and his buddies were throwing rocks into a clump of bushes. Sanosuke could hear a yip, like some small creature was injured.
“Aw look, guys, it’s the brat!” Chokichi jeered.“Babysitting your little sister again, Sano?”
“What’s the matter, your knee still hurt?” Sanosuke answered. He might not like it that Uki tagged after him everywhere, but that was his business. Besides, he was secretly kind of proud of his little sister. She was the one who had kicked Chokichi in the knee for trying to steal persimmons from the younger children.
“Foxes. We just killed the vixen,” Taisaku bragged. “Now we’re after the kit.”
“That’s mean!” Uki cried.
“Just ’bout like you, Chokichi, pickin’ on something little and helpless,” Sano added. The persimmon incident hadn’t been the first; every younger kid in the village had had at least one run-in with the older boy. Lately some of the other boys had started sucking up to him. It wasn’t just Nobu, who wasn’t quite right in the head and didn’t know the others made fun of him when he wasn’t there. Taisaku, just a year older than Sano, had decided he would rather bully than be bullied, and now joined Chokichi in tormenting the younger kids.
“Like you?” Chokichi sneered.
“Wanna find out?” Sano demanded, cracking his knuckles the way his father did.
“C’mon, Chokichi, kick his butt!” Taisaku called.
“Teach him a lesson!” cheered Nobu.
Uki backed away, her hands over her mouth and her eyes wide. “Sano… niichan…”
Sano charged.
He managed to get a couple of hard punches in, but the much larger Chokichi sent him flying with a well-placed fist. He went flying.
“Sano!” Uki screamed.
He picked himself up. “Che!” he spat. “That the best you can do?” He went at the older boy again – with much the same result.
“You ready to give up yet, brat?” jeered Chokichi.
Sano wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. “Mada mada!” He nailed his rival with a lucky uppercut that sent the larger boy sprawling into the bushes.
Chokichi picked himself up slowly, rubbing his jaw. “Okay, brat, tell ya what. You want that kit so bad, you get him outta that bush yourself. He’s all yours.”
“Whassa matter, doncha wanna fight me?”
“Aw, I got better things to do. That fox is just gonna die without its mama anyway. C’mon, let’s see ya try. You’re brave enough ta fight me, are ya brave enough ta go after a mad fox?”
Sano eyed the older boy warily. “Ya better not do nothin’ when my back’s turned.”
Chokichi spat contemptuously. “It’s gonna be too much fun watchin’ you get bit and swell up and die!” But he backed off to a safe distance, and motioned his followers to do likewise.
Sano flattened himself on the ground and peered under the bush. He couldn’t see anything. “You in there, fox?” he asked.
He heard nothing, not even breathing.
“Che,” he swore, and reached under the bush.
He wriggled as close as he could. Thorns scratched his skin and tore his clothing. There was nothing… nothing…
There! His hand brushed something soft and warm – an animal’s fur! “Gotcha!” he said and closed his fingers around all of it that he could reach. The baby fox twisted in his grip and sank needle-sharp teeth into his hand. “Yow!” he yelled. “I’m tryin’ to rescue ya, ya ungrateful little – chikusho!”
“Sano!” Uki cried.
“Here! I got it!” He cradled the ball of reddish fur against his body and, with his free hand, tried to pry its jaws open. “Sheesh, that hurts!”
“Let me see!” Uki flung herself to her knees beside him. “Let me touch him!”
“Don’t, he’ll bite ya!”
“Sano, he’s bleeding!”
“Che, that’s my blood.” But as Uki and the boys watched, the baby fox shuddered once and then went very still.
Sano stared at it in helpless shock. “No,” he whispered. “C’mon, little guy, you got too much fight to just go and die. C’mon!” He glared at Chokichi. “Think you’re so strong, do ya? Killin’ a little baby fox? You’re s’posed to protect little helpless things, not hurt ’em!” He sprang at the larger boy in blind rage.
“A real Sekihoutai!” a man laughed. The fight stopped before it started as all the boys turned around to gape at the newcomer.
The boys had never seen anyone like the stranger. He wasn’t dressed like a farmer – even a rich one – or a merchant or a priest, or even the samurai who came around every fall to collect the land-tax, even though he wore a single sword at his waist. He wore a weird kind of hakama that fit close to his legs, the same dark blue as his kosode, and a red garment like a sleeveless kataginu. His hair was strangest of all. He didn’t wear it in a samurai’s chonmage, or even pulled up the way Sano had seen it on ronin who passed through the village. His hair was short, little longer than most of the men in the village wore it, held out of his eyes by a strip of red cloth the same color as his red overgarment.
“Could one of you boys show me the way to your village?” the stranger asked. “I need to talk to your fathers about something very important.”
“’Bout what?” Chochiki demanded in an insulting voice. “All the mess in Kyoto? Sounds like that’s where you’re from. My old man ain’t gonna want much to do with it.”
“Your father wouldn’t want to have a family name of his own?” the stranger asked. “To own the land he farms? To only pay half what he pays now in taxes? ”
“How could he do that?” Nobu asked, scratching his head. “We’re not samurai.”
“That’s right,” agreed another boy. “Even Nobu ain’t that dumb. The shogun and his samurai got all the power, they ain’t gonna hand it to us.”
“Ah, but the shogun doesn’t have the power any more. The Emperor does, and he’s going to restore the status that was taken from your families, and give help to anyone who needs it.”
A family name? Sano didn’t quite understand what was going on, but he knew that only samurai and village headmen had family names. But it hadn’t always been that way. He’d heard Oyaji say something once… he’d been a little kid and hadn’t understood much, and Oyaji had been drunk. But he remembered. They’d been somebody once. Headmen, maybe even samurai. A name…
“I’ll take you,” he said out loud. “I guess my dad might want to hear what you got to say.” He led the newcomer in the direction of the village. “So who are you guys?”
“We’re the Sekihoutai,” the stranger explained. “The brigade that offers the red heart of patriotism in service to the Emperor.”
“And the Emperor’s gonna cut our taxes and stuff?” Sano asked. “Oyaji ain’t gonna hafta go away every time some big shot comes through and wants his baggage carried?”
“The four classes have to be strong in order for Japan to be strong, and that means no class should oppress another. How else can we keep our land free of foreigners?”
Sano scratched his head. He wasn’t quite sure what a foreigner was; from what the grownups said it sounded like some new kind of oni. “You mean anybody can fight these foreigners? Not just samurai? People like me too?”
“Do you want to offer your red heart to the Emperor too?” The stranger took the red band from his head and tied it around Sano’s. “Because you want to protect helpless things, now you’re one of the Sekihoutai.”
Sano reached up and touched the strip of cloth. Offering my red heart to the emperor… protecting people… like Momotaro or something! I’ll smash those oni foreigners!
He found his father on the roof, repairing the thatch. “Oi! Oyaji!”
His father looked up. “Eh? What have you brought home this time? And what’s that thing on your head?”
“Che.” Sano grinned. “This here’s – hey, what’s your name anyway?”
“You have a fine boy here,” the stranger smiled. “My name is Souzou Sagara. We of the Sekihoutai have come to ask the farmers in this district to support the Emperor.”
NOTES, EXPLANATIONS ETC.
I got a lot about Souzou Sagara and what the Sekihoutai stood for from a book called The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration by Anne Walthall. Tase Takemura (the name Taseko Matsuo was inaccurately bestowed on her by later writers; she wrote her own name as Tase – “ko” did not become an element in women’s names until much later in the Meiji era – and at the time, only samurai women took their husbands’ family names) was the wife of a village headman in the Ina Valley, not far from where Sanosuke probably grew up. She studied classical poetry and through that interest became involved with the nativist movement – an intensely nationalistic group that, in various incarnations, influenced government and social policy until the mid-1940s. In the early 1860s she went to Kyoto and met with a number of leaders of the Ishin Shishi, among them Takasugi and possibly Katsura as well. Unfortunately, she was there too early to have met the young Battousai. It’s too bad; she was a sharp old bird who had raised boys of her own, and I don’t think Kenshin’s usual self-masking would have gone very far with her.
Souzou Sagara was apparently a disciple of the same nativist movement, and the book gives a detailed account of the fall of the Sekihoutai. He met with O Tase not long before his death. Watsuki’s note appears to be right; the nativists were very concerned with maintaining the status hierarchy, and “equality of the four classes” was something their leaders would not have appreciated. But they did hold to the Confucian ideal that all divisions of society had their functions to perform, and were of equal importance to the social order.
I have made some assumptions about Sano’s family background. When peasants were permitted – or required – to adopt family names, most peasant families adopted the names of their villages or nearby geographic features – one explanation for the prevalance of geographic surnames in Japan. But a number of families had ancestors who had lost or abandoned samurai status, and had preserved their family names as a hidden heritage, which they brought into the open. I think the Higashidane may well be one of these.
It was fairly common for peasants to be impressed as baggage carriers. This was an onerous burden and universally hated.