after a full day at sea we arrived in the castle town of Izuhara [on Tsushima]. I was amazed to find a town like this on an island at the other end of the sea. In those days some of the homes in Izuhara had tiled roofs but many still had rocks on their roofs. The feudal lord made his rounds of the island on horseback. He wore a hat and an open-backed half-coat and was a truly splendid sight.
It must have been around the time of the fall festival that we arrived in Tsushima. We’d left Kuka after Bon, but the weather was bad and it had taken the better part of a month.
We contracted with a seafood wholesaler in Izuhara, and because he was going to build a storage shed in Azamo that year, the boat I was on came here. Nowadays, Azamo is a fine, civilized town, but when I first came here, this bay was all dark and grown up with trees. See that grove of chinquapin trees across the bay, those big trees growing packed close together? In these parts, trees like that were growing all over. And there were big rocks in the bay, so it wasn’t the kind of place you’d moor a boat. What’s more, there were no people. The trees grew right down to water’s edge, so close that their branches touched the sea. There was just one shed atop the promontory at the border of Azamo and Little Azamo, and it looked like it might blow over. Someone from Hirado had put in a net for yellowtail just below, and the shed was for the net’s caretaker.
Properly speaking, Azamo was in a forest dedicated to Priest Tendo, so people were not supposed to live here. Around here, such places were called shige, and the people really feared them. They’d say, “That’s Tendo’s shige so you shouldn’t live there, you mustn’t do anything that will defile it.” The beach in the back of the bay was called “No Admission Beach” and no one was permitted to go there.
You ask why it was that people from Kuka came to live in such a place? There were a lot of samurai in Tsushima, and traditions were strictly observed in all the villages. We fishermen didn’t have etiquette or manners, so we weren’t able to associate with others there. It didn’t matter to us if we suffered divine punishment, and figuring it would be best to just live amongst ourselves, with people who got along well, we decided to build a shed in Azamo and live here.
So you want me to talk a bit more about what happened before that? Well, anything earlier was from stories I heard from the grown-ups so I don’t know much. Tsushima is near Korea, and I heard that the Japanese often went to Korea secretly [because Japan was still closed at the time], to buy ginseng. I often heard about ginseng. It was really costly, and what you could hold in the palm of your hand was worth many gold pieces. It just wouldn’t grow in Japan, so people went secretly to buy it.
The moneychanger Gohei was the boss. People would refer to “the moneychanger of Kaga,” or to “Kaga where the moneychanger is.” Gohei was a shipping agent and the wealthiest man in Kaga. When he came to Tsushima, he wore a Japanese kimono and raised a Japanese flag, but when he’d passed Tsushima he raised a Korean flag, wore Korean clothing, and, having become a Korean, made the crossing. Aside from the moneychangers, there were more Gohei imitations than could be counted. Eluding government officials located in Tsushima, they went to Korea as well. And there were far more of them than the government could handle.
The government placed a lookout on Teppo [Gun] Point, west of Azamo, on the southwest end of Tsushima. When they sighted a fishing boat that had set out rowing west from the Ko Peninsula, which juts far out into the ocean east of Azamo, they’d fire a warning gunshot into the air. If the boat didn’t start back east, they’d come rowing out of the Tsutsu Bay in a longboat. These boats were narrow and long. They had eighteen oars and were so fast it seemed they were flying. They’d even beaten steamships in a race. With all those oars, they were also called “centipedes” and everyone feared them.
GRANDPA KAJITA’S TRAVELS
When the gun was fired from Teppo Point, the rowers in Tsutsu Bay would ready themselves. When a second shot was fired, they’d come out rowing. Nearly all the fishing boats were caught. And when they were caught, they were taken to Izuhara and subjected to water torture. They’d force the fishermen’s mouths open and pour water in and they’d choke. It was more painful than a person could bear. Fearing that, the fishermen did their best not to go west of Ko Peninsula.
As it happens, nearly three miles out from Ko Peninsula there was a place called Ose, the number-one fishing spot for sea bream in Tsushima. There were big fish there. At times they caught sea bream there that were three feet from eye to tail, bigger than any you might see these days. It was that kind of fishing spot, so everyone went. And before they knew it, the wind and tides would take the fishermen out to the west. A gun would go off, the longboat would come along, and they’d run for it, scattering like baby spiders. Those who fell behind were caught, and though they’d committed no crime, they too were subjected to water torture. It was like dancing on the edge of the boiling pot of hell.
When night fell, the fishermen would anchor and spend the night east of there, off the coast from Naiin, in the shadow of Naiin Island. They called that place “Sails Down,” and it was the best-hidden anchorage.
Then, after the Meiji Restoration [1868], fishing boats were allowed west of the Ko Peninsula. The Kuka fishermen jumped for joy. The sea bream there were coming from the west so, without a doubt, there were even more sea bream off the coast from Tsutsu, and that’s where all the fishermen rushed to be. Sure enough, the fish were there for the catching. The ocean was full of them. The people of Tsutsu allowed fishing offshore, but didn’t permit people to moor their boats there, so when night fell these fishermen would go back to Naiin Island.
Well, one day something terrible happened. It was December 15, 1872. The sun had sparkled a bit in the morning, and when it sparkles, a wind will come up. Not thinking much of it, though, the Kuka fishermen headed out, offshore from Tsutsu. Past noon, a terrific northerly began to blow. They say the air grew damp and salty, and Tsutsu, right there in front of their eyes, grew dim and hard to see. They rowed for Tsutsu with all their might, but nearly everyone was swept out to sea and died. Altogether forty-four people went missing, and the great Katsuemon was among them. The man was thought to be a fishing god. Katsuemon could look at the weather, the tide, at fish . . . he was never off the mark about anything having to do with fishing. But even Katsuemon died, and to this day that storm is referred to as the Katsuemon Storm.
Most everyone living along the sea between Kuka and Tsushima knew Katsuemon. If someone mentioned “Katsuemon from Kuka” others would think, “Oh, the fishing god.” If someone asked Katsuemon, “What’ll the weather be tomorrow?” ten times out of ten it would be as Katsuemon had said. But even Katsuemon was capable of an oversight. Apparently he’d said, “What an unpleasant day!” on his way out, and he never came back.
The people of Tsutsu were hard on outsiders, but they were all good people and they held a memorial service at the Eisen Temple for the forty-four who had died. And to this day, the souls of the dead are enshrined there. Sometimes, on the night of December 15, the people of Tsutsu see the spirits of the forty-four fishermen walking in from the sea, towards the Eisen Temple.
But even after such a large accident, the people of Kuka didn’t stop coming to Tsushima. It’s said that on that day, one of the boats had capsized and drifted away with a father and son clinging to it. They were exceptionally lucky, for they drifted and drifted, to the ocean off Hirado, and were saved by the people there. This father and son returned to Kuka and told others, “Our boat capsized because waves came in over the bow and stern. Mount wide boards in your bow and stern, and your boats will be stronger in the waves.” After hearing this, fishermen started doing just that. And when waves rose up they spilled back to the sea and didn’t swamp the boat. In any case, after that, there was never an occasion when as many as forty or fifty people died.
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