The Village of Eight Graves

PROLOGUEThe village of Eight Graves is perched amid the desolatemountains on the border of Tottori and Okayama prefectures.Naturally, arable land is scarce in these parts, and of what littlethere is, most is given over to a small handful of rice paddiesdotted around, each measuring only ten or, at most, twenty tsubo,or about seven hundred square feet. The inhospitable climatemakes for a meagre harvest, and no matter the calls to increaseproduction, the rice paddies yield barely enough to feed thevillagers. Nevertheless, owing to a wealth of other resources,the inhabitants there live in relative comfort.Charcoal-making and cattle-rearing are the main industriesin Eight Graves. The latter is a recent phenomenon, but theformer has been the villagers’ chief livelihood for generations.The mountains that envelop the village stretch all the way toTottori and are blanketed in various species of oak—blue,sawtooth and jolcham. They grow in such abundance that theregion has long been famed for its charcoal throughout thewhole of Kansai.In more recent times, however, it is cattle-rearing that hasbecome the village’s main source of revenue: the local breed, thechiya-ushi, serves just as well for working as it does for eating,and the cattle market at neighbouring Niimi attracts tradersfrom far and wide.Each household in the village is charged with raising ve orsix head of cattle: they aren’t the property of the village farmers,but that of the landowners who give the farmers the calves andsell them on when they are fully grown. The proceeds of thesale are then shared between the farmer and the landownerat a xed rate. Thus, as in any agricultural village, the ownersand the sharefarmers are pitted against one another: in such amodest settlement as this, there are stark dierences in fortune.In Eight Graves, there are two wealthy houses: the Tajimisand the Nomuras. Since the Tajimi family is situated in the eastof the village, they are known as “The House of the East”, while,by the same stroke of reasoning, the Nomura family is knownas “The House of the West”.But a mystery remains: the origin of the village’s name…Inured to it across generations, those who have been bornand laid their bones to rest there will scarcely have given asecond thought to this bizarre name. But outsiders will wonderat hearing it for the rst time. There must be a story there,they’ll think. And indeed, a story there is—and a strange one.To tell it, we must go back some 380 years, all the way to theAge of Warring States…On 6th July, in the year 1566, when the great daimyo YoshihisaAmago yielded to his enemy Motonari Mori and surrenderedthe Tsukiyama Castle, one of his young samurai refused to givehimself up and ed the castle with seven faithful retainers.Legend has it that, in the hope of continuing their struggleanother day, they saddled three horses with 3,000 tael of goldand, after enduring many hardships, fording rivers and crossingmountains, nally arrived at this very village.To begin with, the villagers received the eight warriors hospitablyenough. Put at ease by this reception and the villagers’simple ways, the warriors decided to stay in the village for a time,donning peasant clothes and even taking up charcoal-making.Fortunately, the deep mountain terrain oered plenty ofspots in which to take refuge, should the need ever arise.Because of limestone deposits throughout the area, there werecaves, which also provided convenient hiding places. Therewere a great number of these caves and grottoes down in thevalley, some so deep and labyrinthine that no one had daredto explore their furthest reaches. If ever you were pursued, youcould easily hide yourself away there. Doubtless it was preciselythis geography that led the eight warriors to decide to makethe village their temporary abode.Six months passed in peace and harmony, without any troublebetween the villagers and the eight samurai. Meanwhile,however, Mori’s men had redoubled their eorts, for the leaderof the fugitives was famous even in the Amago clan, and whoknew what terrible calamity might yet come to pass if he wereleft alive to ght another day. At last, their search for the eightmen led them to these very mountains.The villagers sheltering the fugitives gradually began tofear for their own lives. Not only that, but the glittering rewardoered by Mori’s men was also enough to make them rethinktheir hospitality. What tempted the villagers most, however, wasthe 3,000 tael of gold that had supposedly been carried onhorseback. If only they could kill the fugitives, every last one ofthem, then no one else would ever know about the gold. Evenif Mori’s men did happen to know about it, even if they werelooking for it, all the villagers had to do was insist that theyhadn’t ever heard about it, let alone seen anything of the kind.There were many discussions about this, but eventuallythe day came when, having reached a consensus, the villagerstook the eight samurai by surprise. It happened when the menwere in a hut, burning wood to make charcoal. The villagerssurrounded it and, in order to block the men’s escape, set fireto dried grass on three sides. The youngest and strongest thenburst into the hut, brandishing bamboo spears and hatchetsordinarily used for tree-cutting. The era had been plagued bywars, you see, and had instilled the art of warfare even in thepeasantry.The samurai were caught o guard. They had trusted thevillagers absolutely and this unprovoked attack came like abolt from the blue. There were no weapons in that little hut, ofcourse, so they had to defend themselves as best they could withbillhooks and axes, but the odds were stacked against them andit was a losing battle. One fell, then another, and another… untilat last the tragic moment came when all eight of them lay slain.The villagers decapitated every one of the bodies and, withcries of triumph, set re to the hut: but according to legend,those eight severed heads wore an expression of such tremendousreproach that it made anyone who saw them shudder infear. The leader of the eight samurai above all retained the terrifyinglook he had worn as he lay there dying, hacked to piecesby the villagers and drowning in his own blood; with his lastbreath, he had cursed the village, vowing to visit his vengeanceupon it for seven generations to come.Although the heads secured for the villagers the promisedbounty from the Mori clan, they were never able to nd wherethe all-important 3,000 tael of gold had been hidden. Theyhunted for it high and low, in a frenzy, uprooting grass, boringthrough sheer rock, tearing up the valley, but never did they ndso much as a speck of gold. Worse still, during their searches, aseries of ominous events occurred: one man met his tragic end,trapped by a cave-in in the depths of a grotto; another, whiledrilling the rock face, caused a landslide and lost his footing,falling to the bottom of a ravine, leaving him lame for the restof his days; and a third man, who was digging the earth at theroots of a tree, was horribly crushed under the weight of thetrunk that suddenly collapsed on top of him.Mysterious happenings such as these followed one afteranother, but what came next plunged the villagers into anabyss of terror.Six months had passed since the massacre of the eightsamurai. Who can say why, but that year there were a greatmany thunderstorms in the region, bringing with them terriblebolts of lightning: frightened, the villagers saw in this a sign ofthe eight warriors’ curse. One day, the lightning struck a cedarin the garden of Shozaemon Tajimi, splitting the great tree intwo with tremendous force, right down to its very roots. Now,the curious thing was that this Shozaemon Tajimi had been theringleader of the attack on the warriors, and, since that day, hehad been plagued by remorse and had begun to act strangely,tyrannizing his family and doing things that nobody in hisright mind would do. Then the lightning struck the tree… Heseized a sword lying nearby and struck dead several membersof his own household. Then, running out into the street, oneby one he felled every villager he came across, before nallytaking refuge in the mountains, where he ended his life byself-decapitation.All in all, there were more than a dozen wounded, but exactlyseven had died by Shozaemon’s hand. Counting Shozaemonhimself, that made a grand total of eight deaths, which, rightlyor wrongly, the villagers fearfully interpreted as another act ofretribution from those eight warriors who had been murderedin cold blood.In order to appease their fury, the villagers decided to disinterthe bodies of the eight samurai, whom they had buriedlike dogs, and to reinter them with all due ceremony, erectingeight graves where they were venerated as divinities. Of course,it was this shrine in the hills behind the village that lent theplace its current name.