Chapter Thirty-Six The Last Letter of Iwasaki Sen
Lee Turner, you are the strangest person I’ve ever met.
Take this as a compliment—there are enough boring people in the world.
Or, if you would like to be offended, that’s also fine. Because then you will remember me as the girl who offended you, and
I don’t mind that as long as I am remembered.
My father always said that samurai do not fear death. That is how I know, at last, that I have become a samurai.
Because now, when I think of my life, and my time here, I don’t see it as a fixed beginning and ending on a flat plane. Maybe
for us, time curves back around and its beginning meets its end, and we’ll meet again one day in a closet where I will almost
cut you down with my katana. Or maybe time is like a train that reaches its destination, then turns back around and heads
home, and we get to try again once more. All I know is that I’ve never feared death, I have feared an ending. And now, because
of you, I know that nothing ever truly ends.
Normally, a father’s property would go to his eldest son, but soon my father will have no sons, and they will have no children after they die. All my father’s possessions belong to me, but I have no sons either.
So instead, I leave everything to you.
“Everything” is not much, in this case.
I leave you the week we’ve spent together—good or bad, however you saw it, it’s now yours, so please keep it somewhere safe.
And, more importantly, I leave you this house.
I write this to you in 1877, a year when you are not yet born. I do not understand how this strange door of ours works, but
I know that somehow you have found me, and somehow, inevitably, this will find you.
One day, you will be born somewhere far away from me. When you grow up, please come to Japan, to this house behind the sword
ferns, and find me. I want to meet you again.
Iwasaki Sen
The Last Samurai
* * * * *