The Last Concubine Read Free

travellers, spangled with the exotic air of faraway places. Groups of pilgrims in their white robes came ambling through, ringing their bells, on their way to distant shrines, though most of them seemed more interested in having a rollicking time and seeing the world than in prayer and devotions. Some were wealthy merchants accompanied by a retinue of wives, concubines and servants, all dressed in the height of fashion. Some were poor peasants and others were begging their way, dependent on alms. Convoys of samurai rode on horseback or in palanquins, and merchants supervised consignments of freight packed into chests and carried by cavalcades of porters. Wandering poets stayed for days to lead poetry-writing evenings and scholars and priests relayed the choicest news, controversy and gossip from the three great cities, Osaka, Kyoto and Edo. Then there were mail couriers, stopping just long enough to change horses, and shifty-eyed characters everyone knew were spies or police agents, who kept an eye on all the other travellers.
    Add to them renegade samurai, tinkers, peddlers, gangsters, gamblers, travelling players, magicians, rogues and sellers of toad oil – guaranteed to cure every ailment under the sun – and there was plenty to keep the villagers in business. Every evening the geishas were out in force, dragging in passing men. The sounds of music, merriment and dancing spilt from the lamp-lit inns into the dark street.
    Jiroemon too kept an inn, but his was a very splendid and exclusive one, designated for the use of the daimyo lords who travelled the Inner Mountain Road every year. In the off-season, officials and other important or very wealthy personages were allowed to stay there too.
    The daimyos were provincial rulers. Each was the lord of his own small domain and kept his own army. They collected taxes and had power of life or death over their subjects. But they all owed allegiance to the shogun in Edo and were obliged to travel there every year to pay homage, show their faces at court and stay for several months. Each had two or three palaces in the city where their womenfolk lived permanently, prisoners in golden cages.
    There were thirty-four greater or lesser daimyos who used the Inner Mountain Road. Some would be going one way, some the other, east to Edo or west towards Kyoto, the holy city and official capital of the country, where the emperor lived in seclusion. They were always accompanied by a magnificent entourage, with hundreds of attendants and guards. It was a breathtaking spectacle. The peasants were supposed to keep away from the road when they passed or at least to stay on their hands and knees with their heads bowed; but they all did their best to see as much of the procession as they dared.
    All, except the palanquin bearers, would be smartly turned out in black silk. Some would be on horseback but most marched on foot, in close formation. The lower ranks, the pikemen and the bearers of sunhats, parasols and trunks, always put on a grand display for the benefit of the cowering villagers, swaggering along with their robes hitched right up at the back, their bare buttocks glinting in the sun with only a loincloth to cover the gap. With every step they kicked one heel up nearly to the buttock and thrust the opposite arm forward as if they were swimming through the air. The pike-bearers twirled their pikes, the hatbearers their hats and the parasol-bearers their parasols, all in precisely the same rhythm.
    The processions always stopped in Jiroemon’s village to rest and change horses and porters. While the underlings were busy the palanquins carrying the daimyo and his retainers would proceed to Jiroemon’s inn, where they took tea or stayed overnight. Most of the daimyos had been visiting for many years and had got to know the well-educated and rather entertaining innkeeper. When they had consumed a little sake and the time came to call in their favourite geishas, some even relaxedenough to