The Tale of Junko and Sayuri
by Peter Beagle
In Japan, very, very, long ago, when almost anybody you met on the road might
turn out to be a god or a demon, there was a young man named Junko. That name
can mean "genuine" in Japanese, or "pure," or "obedient," and he was all of those
things then. He served the great daimyo Lord Kuroda, lord of much of southern
Honshu, as Chief Huntsman, and was privileged to live in the lord's castle itself,
rather than in any of the outer structures, the yagura. In addition, he was handsome
and amiable, and all the ladies of the court were aware of him. But he had no
notion of this, which only added to his charm. He was a very serious young man.
He was also a commoner, born of the poorest folk in a poor village, which meant
that he had not the right even to a family name, nor even to be called Junko-san as
a mark of respect. In most courts of that time, he would never have been permitted
to look straight into the eyes of a samurai, let alone to live so intimately among
them. But the Lord Kuroda was an unusual man, with his own sense of humor, his
own ideas of what constituted a samurai, and with a doubtless lamentable tendency
to treat everyone equally. This was generally blamed on his peculiar horoscope.
Now at this time, it often seemed as though half of Japan were forever at war with
the other half. The mighty private armies of the daimyos marched and galloped up
and down the land, leaving peasant villages and great fortresses alike smoldering
behind them as they pleased. The shogun at Kyoto might well issue his edicts from
time to time, but the shogunate had not then the power that it was to seize much
later; so for the most part his threats went unheeded, and no peace treaty endured
for long. The Lord Kuroda held himself and his own people aside from war as
much as he could, believing it tedious, pointless and utterly impractical, but even
he found it wise to keep an army of retainers. And the poor in other less fortunate
prefectures replanted and built their houses again, and said among themselves that
Buddha and the kami -- the many gods of Shinto -- alike slept.
One cold winter, when game was particularly scarce, Junko went out hunting for
his master. Friends would gladly have come with him, but everyone knew that
Junko preferred to hunt alone. He was polite about it, as always, but he felt that the
other courtiers made too much noise and frightened away the winter-white deer
and rabbits and wild pigs that he was stalking. He himself moved as quietly --
even pulling a sledge behind him -- as any fish in a stream, or any bird in the air,
and he never came home empty-handed.
On this day, as Amaterasu, the sun, was drowsing down the western sky, Junko
also was starting back to the Lord Kuroda's castle. His sledge was laden with a fat
stag, and a pig as well, and Junko knew that another kill would load the sledge too
heavily for his strength. All the same, he could not resist loosing one last arrow at a
second wild pig that had broken the ice on a frozen stream, and was greedily
drinking there, ignoring everything but the water. It was too good a chance to pass
up, and Junko stood very still, took a deep breath -- then let it out, just a little bit,
as archers will do -- and let his arrow fly.
It may have been that his hands were cold, or that the pig moved slightly at the last
moment, or even that the growing twilight deceived Junko's eye, though that seems
unlikely. At all events, he missed his mark -- the arrow hissed past the pig's left
ear, sending the animal off in a panicky scramble through the brush, out of sight
and range in an instant -- but he hit something. Something at the very edge of the
water gave a small, sad cry, thrashed violently in the weeds there for a moment,
and then fell silent and still.
