Chapter 4 1865 - France
YOSHI-NO-KATA
Strange and glorious sights filled Paris. Ever since she stepped off the ship, Yoshi’s mind swirled with wonder. During the voyage, her father tried to prepare her for the shock, but the eight-month journey around Cape Horn of Africa did little to ease her astonishment at the overwhelming sights.
The long sail accomplished several things, however.
Yoshi discovered she made for a much better sailor than her father, who lost thirty pounds on the voyage from severe seasickness, as did ninety percent of the twenty-two-person entourage.
The regular seamen managed fine, of course, but her father and the other samurai spent most days at the railing or in their bunks, unable to function.
Her father had allowed Yoshi two young female attendants who also fared better than most of the men.
The captain had given the women a small room adjacent to his cabin, where the crew stacked three bunks into a room the size of a small closet.
With her personal space no bigger than a coffin, she learned to spend most of her time deckside relishing in the ocean’s vastness.
The joyous solitude of traversing the staggering oceans surprised Yoshi.
Time and distance also lessened the shame that held her hostage after leaving the Shōgun’s bedchamber.
The outcome of the encounter had spread like sickness among the women of the ōoku.
Although each woman would give her life for the Shōgun, the ochūrō girls harbored an undercurrent of silent competition and veiled malice.
Boarding the ship, Yoshi also learned the two reasons her father had asked this most unusual task of her. After all, she did not know of any other women who had ever left Japan. Certainly, on her father’s first trip to Europe and America, no women had accompanied the envoy.
Walking up the gangway, her father had turned to her and said, “Your mother has died.” Although Yoshi had not seen her mother since the age of five when her father took her to the castle, a wind of sorrow had chased her on the voyage. She hoped someday her father would tell her more.
However, once onboard the ship, she discovered the actual reason her father invited her to accompany the mission—to serve as a translator.
She met Haruto Roches for the first time on deck, but later learned he was the mixed breed son of Léon Roches, the French diplomat and former Catholic priest who had renounced his vows and married a former prostitute.
Haruto stood out as an oddity, but spoke perfect French, as his father had established a French language school outside of Edo.
Yoshi had asked her father during the voyage why he hadn’t let Haruto translate, and he’d made it abundantly clear that on his last trip, he had learned to not trust the priest translators, and Haruto’s mixed heritage made him equally suspect.
So, in order to assuage his distrust, he’d bought Yoshi the first Franco-Japanese dictionary, published the year before. With that authority, Haruto made for a perfect tutor. Yoshi had insisted that Haruto speak only French to her for eight months, and stepping off the ship, she was nearly fluent.
During the sail, she also learned that the world had transformed, and Japan would need to change with it. Other countries were forcing their way into Japan ever since the sea battle—the Bombardment of Shimonoseki—two years prior for control of the straits between Japan and Korea.
After landing in the Port of Le Havre and a two-day bumpy carriage ride to Paris, Yoshi had a hard time adjusting to the sights, sounds, and smells of France.
Everything was colossal—including the massive buildings; their hotel, the Hotel du Louvre; the elegant Tuileries Palace, situated between the hotel and the Seine River, with its expansive gardens and museums; and the women’s dresses and hairdos.
The food tasted terrible, except this thing they called ice cream.
Everywhere the Japanese entourage went, the French offered them wine that tasted bitter and dry.
Yoshi found the French people and their customs odd, but they treated her with considerable honor and amazement when she spoke to them in French.
After living in the five-acre women’s quarters and gardens for the past fifteen years, this felt like freedom. Vive la France!
By now Yoshi and her father had been in Paris for six months, and Yoshi had grown accustomed to the city.
However, that evaporated as she stood with the entourage in the massive and intriguing structure called Notre Dame Cathedral, a monument and worship place to their deity.
Yoshi wondered how seven hundred years ago men had moved such heavy stones.
As the group followed the guide down the central aisle of the building, her eyes followed the vertical pillars upward to the vaulted ceiling that reached for the heavens.
Ornate chandeliers hung from each lower arch and colorful stained-glass windows blossomed like spring flowers the entire length near the ceiling.
Halfway down the aisle, the guide turned and said, “Now, if you will look both to your right and left and behind you, you can admire the three most beautiful rose windows in all the world.”
Walking two steps behind her father, she whispered the translation from French to Japanese.
After so many months in country, the two had found a smooth rhythm.
As people talked directly to him, she quickly and quietly translated.
The other samurai had to overlook the break in protocol of her walking in front of them because Yoshi was the only person in the group who spoke French after her father, satisfied she could translate well, had sent Haruto away.
Yoshi looked indirectly at her father in his traditional samurai dress: handsome long trouser pants, hakama, trimmed with cherry blossom embroidery; a gray silk top shitagi, shirt; and a heavy kimono worn loosely over the shitagi and hakama.
She couldn’t help but notice how little his face revealed.
His only response came when he frowned slightly and reached for the two swords fastened awry in his waist sash, uwa-obi, and readjusted them.
She hoped she had translated adequately, although she had become accustomed to his non-reaction and had attributed it to his status from the order of Musahi Shinobi Samurai.
Serving as intelligence operatives and undercover agents, onmitsu, her father had excelled in martial arts and the stealthy collection of information.
She had overheard the other samurai refer to the name they gave him on the first trip: “The Shadow.”
A tall, thin priest dressed in a long, flowing black robe approached them from the front of the cathedral. Yoshi noted the priest’s attire resembled the samurai, except for the large metal cross that hung from a necklace around his neck and his lack of swords.
“The color blue in the windows is for the purity of the Virgin Mary and the red symbolizes the blood of Christ,” the priest explained.
His accent and the words were unknown to Yoshi, and she struggled with the translation.
“I’m sorry, Father, I do not understand the words of this man,” she whispered.
The priest bowed awkwardly to her father and then to Yoshi and said directly to her, “Do you believe in God?”
Heat shot up her neck with his enormous fracture of etiquette. He should not bow to a woman, he should talk directly to her father, and he should never ask such personal questions. She bowed to her father.
Her father readjusted his swords again, waved a dismissive hand, and turned from the man. Unfortunately, this sort of thing had become a common occurrence. It was her father’s way of telling her to talk with the rude man.
She nodded at the priest, looked at the floor and said, “Monsieur, my father is from a long line of samurai and follows the beliefs of Shintoism.”
“Have you heard the creation story?” The priest asked.
“Yes, thank you kind Monsieur,” she said, thinking about her time on the ship with Haruto and the explanation of his father’s faith and the Catholic Church.
“We too have a creation story of the world. Like your religion, we believe that light and darkness were separated and split into the heavens and the earth. Our three kami, or deities, were there from the beginning, much like what I understand the Christian faith to entail.”
“There is where the similarities end, I’m afraid,” the priest replied.
Yoshi smiled and looked at her father. He opened the pocket watch the Emperor’s staff had given him and looked at the time.
“Forgive us, Monsieur. The Emperor invited us to the Salon art exhibition at the Palais de l’Industrie and I am afraid we must depart. Thank you for the kind conversation.”