ON the shore of Hayama, in a little village two hours’ ride by train from Tokyo, there stood a sumptuous villa, the summer residence of the Prince of Nijo, though Nijo himself was seldom seen there. Dissolute and dissipated by nature and cultivation, he preferred the gayeties and excitements of the Imperial Court. Here, however, had resided ever since the year of the Restoration his mother, the Empress Dowager, a noble and high-souled woman, who preferred the old-fashioned conservatism and beauty of her country palace to the modern and garish court.
The decorations of her palace, the style of her robes, and those of her attendants, were entirely of the old time. This was in pleasing contrast to the customs of the new Empress, who had adopted the foreign style. In the Imperial Court in its new Tokyo home, there was the heavy perfume of the choicest roses and violets, but in the palace of the old Empress Dowager there was the subtle, faint aroma of sweet umegaku and tambo.
Fuji, the queenly mountain, wrapped about in its glorious garment of snow, mellowed by the touch of the sun, could be seen from her seat. On all sides of the palace grounds there were valleys and sloping hills. Within the stone walls which encircled the palace like a fortress there were gardens of wondrous beauty.
The palace itself was of simple and old-fashioned architecture. It faced to the east, and its towers and turrets were of gold. Its shojis were large and so clear that the sunlight pierced through them, flooding the interior. The floors were covered with soft sweet tatamis—rush mats; the decorations on the screens and panels of the sliding doors were subdued and refined though works of art.
It was in this palace that the daughter of the Prince of Nijo spent her childhood. She was called Sado-ko, after her mother, who had died in giving her birth. Her father after his presence at a perfunctory feast given in honor of the birth of the princess had returned immediately to his pleasures in the capital, and Sado-ko was left in the charge of her grandmother, the Dowager Empress.
Great was the love existing between these two. All that was noblest in the character and nature of the young princess was fostered by the old Empress. The qualities for which she became noted in after years were the chilling work of those who, after the death of her grandmother, were given charge of Sado-ko.
In early childhood Sado-ko was wont to run with fleet feet about the castle gardens, chasing the gloriously hued butterflies. They flew about her in great numbers, for they were importations to the palace as tame as home birds. They knew the little princess would do them no harm, and so they fluttered lightly to her finger, her head, her shoulder, even to her red lips. Sado-ko loved them dearly, just as she adored the gardens and the goddess-like Fuji,—her first sight upon arising in the morning. She loved, too, the quiet, retired beauty of her life, with its freedom inside the dark stone walls. But more than these things she loved the Empress Dowager.
Until she was twelve years of age, she knew no other life than that encompassed by the walls of the palace grounds. Beyond them she had been told there was another life, turbulent, restless, troublous. The walls looked forbidding. How much worse must be the world outside them, and beyond the wide stretch of land and water that faded into misty outline!
Within were sunshine, birds, flowers, gentle words, and soft caressing smiles. Without, a cruel, cold world waiting to snuff out the warmth and sunshine of her nature. All this was taught to Sado-ko by the old Empress Dowager, who in her old age had become selfish. This was the way in which she sought to keep with her the heart and soul of the companion of her old age,—the child she loved. Even after she had passed away, she knew that the thoughts of the princess would remain with her though her soul should have flown. Thus she paved the way for a companionship in death as in life, as was the custom with her ancient ancestors.
The children of the Empress Dowager had disappointed her. The Emperor was occupied with the cares of the nation and the strenuous conditions of the times, Nijo was almost imbecile from dissipation, her only daughter had been married into the Tokugawa family, and was practically separated from her own kin. There was none left to share companionship with the old Empress, until the little Sado-ko had come. She was the sole princess of the Nijo family recognized by the Empress, for Western morality having sifted its way into the Japanese court, the children of Nijo by his concubines were regarded as illegitimate by the heads of the royal family, although they were treated with the honor due their blood and rank. Sado-ko was motherless. The Empress Dowager was her natural and legal guardian, and to her grandmother she was given.
For ten years, then, these two—the very old Empress and the very young princess—lived together. Because she was not at all of an inquisitive mind, and believed implicitly all that her grandmother told her, the child was perfectly contented with the simple companionship of the Empress, her butterflies, flowers, and birds. But her grandmother was too old to run with her about the gardens, and ofttimes the birds, and the butterflies too, flew over the stone wall and disappeared, to the tearful anxiety of the little princess, who was sure they would meet great harm.
As the children of the retainers of the Empress Dowager were not permitted to visit the private gardens of the palace, Sado-ko had grown up without playmates of her own age. She was being reared in that seclusion befitting a descendant of the sun-goddess, and in quite the ancient style to which her grandmother still clung. So it was only those attendants who waited upon the person of the Dowager Empress who saw the little princess herself. She could have counted upon her ten pink fingers the number of personages with whom she was acquainted. There were the four grim samurai guards of the palace gates, the three elderly maids of honor to the Empress, and her own personal maid and nurse Onatsu-no, in addition to the palace servants and the gardener.
But one eventful day in the month of June, a new personage suddenly introduced himself to Sado-ko. She had been listening drowsily for a long time on the wide balcony of the palace to her grandmother’s reading aloud of ancient Chinese poems, when suddenly a swarm of her own butterflies flew by, all seemingly following the lead of a purple-hued stranger. Instantly Sado-ko left her guardian’s side in pursuit, her net swinging in her hand. She had seldom experienced any trouble in catching her own butterflies, but the stranger flew in an entirely new direction. Through a field of iris and across an orchard Sado-ko followed the flight of the butterflies, until she came to a wall, over which the purple visitor flew.
Flushed and disappointed the princess sat down breathlessly on the grass beneath a cherry tree. She had been seated but a moment, when the tree above her began to shake and a score of ripe cherries descended upon her head. She sprang to her feet, and looking upward saw a roguish face peering down at her from the cherry tree. The face belonged to a boy of possibly fourteen years. He was laughing with delight at the amazed and frightened face of the little princess, and he kept pelting her with cherries, some of which actually broke on her small Imperial person. As, however, Sado-ko continued to gaze up at him in that frightened manner, he sprang to the ground, rolled himself about on the grass for a spell, and then turned several somersaults so grotesque that Sado-ko forgot her fear and burst into childish laughter, clapping her hands delightedly as he came to his feet before her. They were both laughing heartily now, as they surveyed each other. The boy’s sleeves and the front of his obi were filled with cherries, so that his figure was a succession of grotesque bunches. There were cherry stains, too, on his face, particularly in the region of his laughing mouth, through which Sado-ko saw the whitest of teeth gleaming. He had brown eyes, and soft silky hair, unshaven in the centre of his head, as was the case with the palace attendants. Gradually as the princess surveyed him she became grave.
“Who are you?” she said at last. “What is your honorable name, and where do you live?”
“I am Kamura Junzo,” said the boy, “and I live over yonder.” He waved his hand toward the wall.
“On the other side?” inquired Sado-ko in an awed voice. He nodded.
“I know who you are,” he continued.
“I am the Princess Sado-ko,” said the child, gravely.
“Yes,” said the boy, “and the august Sun was your ancestor. You live shut up in this place all alone, and no one plays with you.”
“I have my honorable dear birds and butterflies,” she said.
He looked at her curiously.
“Yes, I have heard you singing to them.”
“And you wished also to see me?” she questioned.
“Yes.” He flushed boyishly, and then added with Spartan honesty, “Also I wanted some of your cherries.”
“They are very good,” said the princess.
“Oh, yes, there are none so good without.”
“Did the guards deign to let you pass through the gates?”
“No.” A pause, then: “I deigned to climb over the wall.”
“Some day,” said Sado-ko, wistfully, “her Majesty says a prince will fly over the walls and carry me away. Perhaps you are that prince.”
“Oh, no; I am not a prince, but if you wish, I will play that I am one.”
“How is that?” she asked, bewildered.
“This cherry tree will be your august castle. I will come over the wall, and you must run around the castle to escape me. I will pursue you, and then I will carry you off from this dark and lonesome prison over the walls to the beautiful world outside.”
“But it is not a lonesome prison here,” said the princess, “and outside it is very cold and miserable, for her Majesty has told me so.”
“Oh, well, let us play it is so.”
And so they played together until past noon, when the maid and gardener were both sent to seek the Princess Sado-ko, who was chasing butterflies. They rescued her just as the “prince” was about to carry her over the walls, upon the top of which he had placed her, by climbing up in the cherry tree and across a bough which sloped to the wall.
The rescued princess stamped her foot angrily at the gardener when he threatened the boy, who laughed jeeringly from the top of the wall; and she scolded the maid when that menial drew her by the hand from the scene. She would not leave the vicinity of the wall until the boy had disappeared completely, which he did by jumping off to the other side. Then she burst into tears for fear he had come to harm in the wicked world without.
Thereafter a close watch was kept upon her movements, and she was not permitted to go near that portion of the walls where stood the cherry-tree castle. Often she heard the boy whistling from that direction, and once she awoke in the night, because she had dreamed that he was calling her name, “Sado-ko! Sado-ko!” After that life was a little more lonesome for the Child of the Sun.
