Chapter 1111: Yamamoto Passes the Exam (Please Subscribe)

"Which domain are you from?"

"This humble one is a retainer of the Saga Domain in Hizen."

"What is your name?"

"Yamamoto Jin'emon Shigetsumi!"

"Yamamoto... how old are you? Aiyo, you look at least seventy, don't you? At that age you can't sit the exam."

"No, no, I'm not that old. I'm only fifty-six this year!"

"Fifty-six? Who are you trying to fool?"

"I really am only fifty-six."

The man claiming to be only fifty-six was none other than Yamamoto Shigetsumi, who had just been thrown out of the house by his wife to take the "college entrance exam." He was now at the end of his rope — if he failed, he would have to cut his belly open. There was no way around it! His household could no longer put food on the table — no, wait, his household had no table at all. When he and his wife fled their home, they had never thought to bring a table.

But what he had never imagined was that the "college entrance exam" being held in Nagasaki City had an age limit for the samurai taking it. Anyone over sixty was barred, and anyone over forty was no longer eligible to serve as a soldier. They could only sit for a post as an official of the shogunate or the Nagasaki Domain — and those slots were extremely limited!

Yamamoto Shigetsumi was too embarrassed to claim he was thirty-six, and the proctor was not blind, so he could only say he was fifty-six.

But the Nagasaki retainer handling registration still did not believe him, and so the two began to argue.

The place where the dispute broke out was the former Chinese guild hall, built much like a government office, so it had now been turned into the Nagasaki "domain office." This "castle" of Nagasaki was not like the "castles" in the interior of Japan, which were built more or less like blockhouses. It was a Chinese-style walled city: a ring of walls on the outside, and bustling streets and lanes within. The "castle lord" or "castle deputy" did not live in a lofty fortress but in a government office set among the streets and markets.

At this moment, however, the person seated in the main office was not the "castle lord" of Nagasaki, but Chief Examiner Chen Yongxi, who had been seconded by the Great Ming Ministry of Rites to help the country of Japan organize its college entrance exam.

This Japanese "college entrance exam" was not like a proper civil service examination. The candidates were not first gathered together and penned up in one examination hall and then handed papers to work on. Instead, they were examined batch by batch as they arrived: if few came, they were tested on arrival; if many came, they queued for the exam.

Moreover, the exam content was divided into civil and military. The civil exam consisted of writing out the Analects from memory and doing arithmetic problems.

For the Analects recitation, candidates wrote down as much as they could remember, and the chief examiner scored them according to how much of the Analects they had correctly written from memory.

The arithmetic problems were calculations plus word problems, very simple ones — things like: "A certain man cuts his belly open and severs a blood vessel. Each minute (Zhu Cilang having introduced the Western standard of minutes and seconds) he loses so much blood. Then someone comes to treat him and transfuses blood into him, replenishing so much blood per minute. The man has so much blood in total. When the blood is gone, the man dies. At what time does the man die?" — that sort of question.

The military exam consisted of thrusting a spear at a straw target and shooting a matchlock at a target.

Chief Examiner Chen Yongxi was in the hall grading papers when he heard a clamor outside. He set down his brush, brought along two samurai who had already "passed," and strode out in grand fashion to take a look.

Seeing an old samurai arguing with a Nagasaki retainer, he went up to question them.

"Why this uproar?"

"Reporting to the Chief Examiner: this old samurai looks at least seventy, yet he insists he is only fifty-six and demands to sit the exam."

Chen Yongxi glanced at Yamamoto. He did look seventy — thin and small (in fact Yamamoto was a big fellow, 158 centimeters tall, quite burly), clearly underfed, and with tears welling in his eyes. He must be a poor Japanese xiucai. Japan had never held civil service examinations before, so the man had never had a chance to sit one. Now that he finally had the chance, he was too old.

"Let him take the exam!" With that one sentence, Chen Yongxi temporarily saved old Yamamoto's life.

Only temporarily. If he did poorly, he would still have to cut his belly open!

"Old sir, do you know the Analects?" Chen Yongxi personally led old Yamamoto toward the examination hall.

"I do, I do. This humble one knows the Analects and can even recite it." Old Yamamoto could also speak Chinese. A high-ranking samurai of one thousand koku still had a bit of learning.

"Do you know arithmetic?" Chen Yongxi asked with a smile.

Yamamoto answered with certainty: "I do! This humble one once served as kando bugyo of the Saga Domain."

The kando bugyo was the head of the Saga Domain's accounting department. How could he not know arithmetic?

As they spoke, the two had already reached the examination hall.

There were no desks inside the hall. Tatami mats were laid on the floor, and the examination papers were spread on the tatami. All the candidates were bent over answering their papers, and to each candidate's right a candle was lit — not for light, but for keeping time. When the candle burned out, the paper had to be handed in.

In the middle of the hall, fierce-looking Nagasaki retainers patrolled with swords at their sides. Anyone caught cheating would be expelled on the spot!

"Do your best," Chen Yongxi encouraged Yamamoto. "When you finish the civil exam, go to the mess hall and eat. Eat your fill, then take the military exam in the afternoon. The military exam tests spear and matchlock — can the old sir use them?"

"I can! Of course I can!" Hope surged once more in Yamamoto Shigetsumi's heart!

Because everything the exam tested, he knew! He could recite the Analects backwards and forwards, he could do arithmetic, he could wield a spear, and he could handle a matchlock too — he was a great samurai of one thousand koku, and a second-generation one at that, not yet decayed.

It seemed that this time he was certain to pass and become a Japanese juren!

Once he passed, he would have food to eat, and he would not have to cut his belly open!

Maeda Kiku clutched a battered samurai sword (which she used for self-defense) and watched over her son, waiting quietly in their broken thatched hut for her old husband to return triumphant from the exam.

She and Yamamoto had agreed on a three-day deadline. If her husband did not return, it meant he had failed and had already found some deserted place to cut his belly open. Then she would no longer need to wait for Yamamoto, but would take their son and go to the New World. Because most of Japan's "non-eldest sons" had no chance to marry, the country had a surplus of women.

A woman like Maeda Kiku, with a son in tow and no dowry, would basically be wanted by no one. But here in Nagasaki there was now a special way out: going to the New World to marry. The New World was desperately short of women, and with Maeda Kiku's looks, she was sure to be in demand once she got there.

So two days earlier, when she had gone into the city to sell her sword, she had already made inquiries. There was now a Pacific sailing ship — a hard-sailed vessel specially developed for the Pacific route — carrying women to the New World, moored at Nagasaki. If she was willing to board, there would be no fees at all, food and drink included, and bringing her child was no problem either. What was more, once they reached the New World, they guaranteed they would not sell her, and she would be allowed to "choose her own spouse." The captain charged only an introduction fee, and not much at that — just ten marten pelts.

Today was the third day. Maeda had kept watch in this drafty, leaky broken hut until dusk, and still had not seen her husband return. Not only had her husband not come back — the husbands of many women living in this cluster of thatched huts had not returned either. It seemed none of them had passed the juren exam. They had all cut their bellies open!

The sound of weeping rose up. First one woman wept, then more joined in, until at last it was a single expanse of weeping.

Maeda Kiku, however, did not weep. She simply picked up her son and her samurai sword, and said softly to the boy: "Tsunetomo (the name Yamamoto Shigetsumi had given his son before leaving for the college entrance exam), your father has become a god. Now it is only the two of us. Let us go to the New World together and live well there!"

With that, she smiled, carried her son out of the hut, and headed for Nagasaki Harbor. Soon she and her son Tsunetomo would leave Japan forever, and they would never return!

But what Maeda Kiku never imagined was that her husband Yamamoto Shigetsumi had not cut his belly open, because he had passed with high honors. And the reason he had not immediately returned "home" to report the news was that the great army of the Shimazu clan was already closing in on the Nagasaki Peninsula.

As an elder retainer of "high virtue and prestige" among the Nagasaki samurai, Yamamoto Shigetsumi, after paying his respects to Tokugawa Takakazu and Hoshina Masatsugu, was immediately assigned an important post — captain of the matchlock troops — and sent off with roughly one hundred matchlock men under his command to undergo the Ming army's devil training.

With military duties on his shoulders, Yamamoto Shigetsumi naturally found his energy, and forgot all about his wife and child. Of course, he also had no idea that his wife Kiku was already preparing to marry far away in America!

(End of Chapter)