Seas of Fortune(188)
“Half the jade you find is consigned for sale to the trading house I select.”
* * *
Date Masamune eyed her speculatively. “First-to-Dance, you have been your tribe’s emissary to New Nippon for some months now. It is perhaps time to take your role as emissary to the next level.”
She cocked her head. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“The shogun, the ruler of Japan, wants to meet an Indian. Two Indians, a male and a female, actually. Think about whether you would like to be the female.”
* * *
Chiyo bowed to the lord commissioners, seated on the dais beside her father, and recited a tanka composed by Princess Nukata a thousand years earlier. When she finished, she bowed again, and they clapped politely.
“Next,” said Shigetsuna, “we have a Young Arithmetical Sage to amaze us.”
Hiraku stood up. And froze.
Shigetsuna rescued him. “If I may ask each of our esteemed guests to name a three digit number . . .” They did so. “Young Hiraku, what is their sum?”
He answered.
The demonstration proceeded from there to multiplication, division, and extraction of roots.
Finally, Shigetsuna called for a table to be brought out, and on it an assistant laid out a counting board, essentially a rectangular grid. Beside it, the assistant placed a bag of sangi, the red-positive and black-negative counting rods.
Shigetsuna posed this problem to Hiraku: “Suppose five large containers and one small container together hold three koku of rice, while one of the large and five of the small containers together hold only two koku. Show me what is the capacity of the large and small containers.”
It was one of the classic problems from the ninth chapter of the Chiu-Chang Suan Chu, written during the Han dynasty. Hiraku could not read Chinese, of course, but Shigetsuna had personally taught Hiraku the method.
Hiraku arranged the sangi on the board: one and five, five and one, and two and three. He then multiplied and subtracted several times. When he was done, he had zero and one hundred twenty, twenty-four and zero, seven and sixty-five.
“The small container holds seven twenty-fourths of a koku, and the large one, thirteen twenty-fourths.”
Shigetsuna cleared his throat. “The answer is . . . Correct! Thank you, Hiraku.”
“And now Date Iroha-hime will play for us on the koto.”
* * *
Lord Commissioner Sakai coughed. “That merchant’s boy—Hirako, is it?”
Date Masamune reluctantly corrected him. “Hiraku.”
“He is quite bright. A crane in a flock of fowls, neh?”
“I am not so sure,” said Masamune. “His father has a head for numbers, too.”
A servant shuffled by. “Some wine, my lords?” The Japanese of California didn’t have sake, because of the problems they had experienced cultivating rice, but they did have wine made from the wild grape of California.
After his cup was refilled, the lord commissioner pressed his point. “Large fish should not live in a small pond. The boy should be in Japan, where he can sit at the feet of the greatest of scholars.”
“Perhaps. But how is that possible? He is the son of a merchant, and he is a kirishitan.”
“Easily solved. I will adopt him into my own family! He will then be a samurai, and of of course he will become a Buddhist and thus can reenter Japan.”
Date Masamune, a father himself, was silent for a moment. “You do him a great honor. But please, do not speak of this publicly yet, I must make proper investigation of the boy’s genealogy, and whether he was born under auspicious stars. My astrologer will need your birth sign, too, to make sure you’re compatible.”
Lord Sakai guffawed. “You sound like an old go-between, warning the family elders that they need to find out more about the bride they’ve been offered. But do what you think necessary.”
* * *
A messenger brought Lord Sakai’s offer to Hiraku’s parents, and Takuma and Mizuchi stared at each other.
“What do we do now?” Mizuchi asked, wringing her hands. “He’s only nine years old. If we hadn’t left Nagasaki, it would be another year or two before he would start an apprenticeship.”
“We must admit that is a far better opportunity then any possible apprenticeship. And if he did start an apprenticeship, you know that he wouldn’t be allowed to visit home for five years.”
“Yes, but we could come to see him. And when his apprenticeship was done, he could return home and help you.” She held her hand to her mouth. “You realize . . . you realize that we would never see him again! We are exiles, remember.”
Takuma pondered this. “I want . . . we want . . . what’s best for Hiraku, but to never see him again, yes that would be hard to bear. But couldn’t he come to see us?”