Little Shinji stood mystified as his older brother, Hojo, clasped his hands behind his head as he lay himself down on the cool spring grass. Hojo loved the adoration he received from his younger sibling, feeding on it like a gluttonous king.
"I'm like everybody," beamed Hojo, "I want the benefits of love without the responsibility."
Shinji marveled at his brother's always fearless honesty. No one who spoke so boldly could be wrong, he surmised. For who in his right mind would ever brag of his own death? No, his brother knew more about life than he did. Shinji wished to learn the secret behind his brother's Cheshire smile.
"But can't you feed Kitty at all?" Kitty was the default name for the stray that came by each day. She had taken a shine to Hojo, he being the only one who could get near to her, a life abandoned having made her overly skittish. But her back left leg was wounded, keeping her from catching the prey she needed to survive.
"Nah," dismissively replied Hojo. "It's every cat for himself in this world."
"But don't you want to feed her?"
Hojo straightened up at the remark. "Want? What does "want" have to do with anything? If you're going to go around wanting stuff you may as well find yourself another planet!"
"But she loves you!"
"That's just what you think!" Hojo loved toying with his brother, playing the all-knowing, inscrutable god. "Nobody ever really loves anybody."
Shinji opened his mouth to stand up for his love, but what if his brother was right? What if his love was no good after all, something not real. He'd be made the everlasting fool, condemned to mockery for life. Shinji swallowed his love, watching Kitty from afar eyeing him suspiciously from under cover of a thick, green bush.
Kitty's skinny frame moved slower as the days moved on. Shinji begged Hojo to feed her, to reward her trust in him. But Hojo loved confounding his brother, to be the One Who Knew Best. It kept Shinji on a string and Hojo obliged himself of this insecurity since neither of his parents nurtured him in any way either. He was simply a burden to be endured, the unfortunate outcome of one night's penetration. That's the way of the world - passing on of the shit - and the world had been around forever, right?
Shinji was determined to win Kitty over but no matter how hard he tried or how much food he held out, the cat kept its distance on what seemed upon the pain of death. "Why does that stupid cat have to trust Hojo and not me? I will feed you, Kitty! Please come back. I love you even if no one believes me!" But the evening air remained still.
In bed that night, Shinji cried out to God for justice in the world. "Can't you fix her leg? Can't you let her eat at all? Can't you make her love me and not Hojo?" But just as Kitty had done, silence returned as the only reply. Seething between the sheets, he lashed out at a God that did not care. "What good are you? What's the point of caring at all?"
Shinji gave up trying to win over Kitty, dejected into defeat. But that was when Kitty finally came to him at last, sensing his open heart and knowing he was not like the others after all. It was when he stopped trying to control her when she dropped her guard. Letting go means victory, not defeat. Was that the secret Hojo knew?
But victory arrived too late, Kitty having suffered too much, this her last day on earth, dying in Shinji's arms. Shinji wailed inconsolably. He now refused all food, drowning in a river of pain. No wonder Kitty trusted so few in a world like this. Monsters all! And God would never fix a thing: eveything had been left up to us. Where lies hope then?
Shinji dashed blindly to the Great Gorge Bridge and as he saw the water rushing and crashing against the rocks below he understood the futility of the river trying to move the impeding boulders. "Love is pain!" he cried out, the words echoing in the vast canyon. Still a child in touch with the Truth, Shinji knew without love no future could ever be had. So he threw himself in to become one with the river.
Hojo also realized his mistake too late, his dishonesty betraying him into a living hell. Anger was the god he served and because his parents chose not to nurture so had he done. He'd made Shinji feel his fear of an unworthy love exposed for eternal mockery. Had he been honest, that illusion would have vanished as a vapor before his eyes. Instead, his lies left him a fool to be mocked for the rest of his life, never to retrieve his brother from the clutches of Death.
The parents of Hojo and Little Shinji came under suspicion in the farming village after both their children committed suicide within twenty four hours of one another. What kind of parents were they? Their lives had been so normal up until then, how had they not noticed the terrible wrongness that lay below? What did that speak of the rest of the village? The elders must restore the village's good name.
The couple was ordered to commit seppuku - a sentence considered most lenient. The village head declared they must die before they reproduce again and have the chance to redeem themselves. In this way, the morals of the village could be scrubbed clean, protecting them from the wrath of the region's ruling daimyo. But even that was to no avail.
Farmers were the backbone of Japan, they being the lowest but most necessary of the classes. The daimyo could not have his farming villages running amok. Dead families produce no rice! The village head was also ordered to endure ritual suicide as a message to the other villages to stick together in their woes and not turn a blind eye. But even though the intended message was one of love, the message of the act was not.
In the Edo era, the Shogunate in Edo eagerly sought out any excuse for dissolving a clan's estate as a means to gain further control over the empire. When hearing of "village heads executed due to farming families committing mass suicide", an investigator was sent to derive a predetermined conclusion of dissolving the clan, continuing the cycle of lies and covering up. But even the Shogunate could not stand against the mighty cannons of the American ships in 1853 who demanded Japan open herself up for trade.
The populace turned against the feeble shogun who could no longer protect them, raising the emperor back to the seat of supreme power, trading one anger for another. Anger needs conquest, though, as Japanese eyes turned outward, raping and pillaging with unspeakable horrors with no God to stop them. Two atomic blasts later, she changed her mind on controlling the world and gained victory through defeat.
***
- Hagakure, the book of the Samurai
Easier said than done. All the world revolves around love, regardless of what we do or say.
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